[no2id-supporters] NO2ID Newsletter No.46

Thu May 25 15:56:33 BST 2006

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    NO2ID
    NO2ID Supporters' Newsletter No. 46 - 25th May 2006

      Not too late to promote our 'Renew for Freedom' campaign

There are just a few days of our renew for freedom campaign left. Now is 
the time to encourage friends and family to renew their passport for 
almost half the predicted cost of the forthcoming ID card/passport and 
without compulsory fingerprinting, iris scanning and entry on to the 
National Identity Register. Many supporters have sent emails to people 
they know highlighting the benefits of early passport renewal. For 
instance over at www.elephantintheroom.info you can read the text of an 
email that one supporter sent to around fifty of his friends - a number 
of whom went on to renew their passports. Please if you can spare a few 
moments spread the word.

During May a diverse and growing list of organisations have signed up to 
the campaign including: Liberty, Privacy International, the Green Party, 
the Scottish National Party, Our World Our Say, Stop the War, A World to 
Win, UKIP, the Countryside Alliance, Statewatch, Globalise Resistance, 
New Alliance, Corporate Watch and the Liberal Democrats, whose Home 
Affairs team this week renewed their passports to demonstrate their 
opposition to ID cards.

£51 spent renewing your passport could prove to be one of the wisest 
investments you and your family ever make in their privacy and freedom. 
It's that simple.

For more details and to download our factsheet go to 
http://www.renewforfreedom.org/

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      What's next?

        New local groups

We have new local groups in Eastbourne, Deptford, Colchester and Bath . 
A list of groups (and a new interactive map) can be found at 
www.no2id.net/localGroups

        NO2ID Art Exhibition

Brighton and Hove NO2ID will soon be calling on artists across the 
country to submit work for a unique exhibition in autumn 2006, drawing  
together the best creative ideas on the theme of identity and what it 
means to be entering 'the database state'. The exhibition of work by 
illustrators, painters, cartoonists, filmmakers, textile designers, 
ceramicists, sculptors, photographers and animators will help visualise 
the implications of ID cards in our society. Entries will be judged in 3 
categories: professional and student artists, adult amateurs and 
under19s. The panel will be looking for great ideas as much as skilled 
and polished work. NO2ID Brighton and Hove are also looking for sponsors 
as well as artists, contact brighton at no2id.net for more details.

        25th May - Eastbourne NO2ID meeting

Thursday, 25th May 7.30pm at the Underground Theatre, Central Library, 
Grove Road, Eastbourne, roughly 1 min walk from Eastbourne station, and 
2 mins from central bus stops in Terminus Road. National coordinator 
Phil Booth will be speaking. at the event.

        27th May - Bristol NO2ID benefit gig

Saturday, 27th May at The White Bear, top of St Michael's Hill, £3. 
Featuring the Grumpy Man DJs, Paul Bradley from The Organelles, 
Mephisto's Island and Chris Beckett. For more info contact Dave 
Gould(bristol at no2id.net)

        30th May - First meeting of Bath NO2ID

Tuesday, 30th Mat 7.30pm at the Garricks Head, Bath. It's a nice, quiet 
little pub next to the Theatre Royal on Sawclose. For more details 
contact bath at no2id.net

        30th May - Cambridge NO2ID pub meeting

Tuesday, 30th May 7.00pm at The Old Spring, Ferry Path, Cambridge CB4 
1HB (http://www.streetmap.co.uk/newmap.srf?x=545469&y=259411&z=0&ar=Y). 
Come along to meet fellow ID card opponents, get a badge and window 
sticker, and plan future activities. For more details contact 
cambridge at no2id.net or text/call Andrew Watson on 07710 469624, or just 
come along on the night.

        30th May - NO2ID Glasgow meeting

Tuesday, 30th May 7.30pm in Mono, King Court, King St. near the 
Trongate. Alternative venue if Mono has a noisy event that night: 
Laurie's bar,
across the road. For more details see 
http://www.no2id-scotland.net/glasgow/meeting.html

        1st June - NO2ID Milton Keynes meeting

Thursday, 1st June 8.00pm at  the Church of Christ the King, Frithwood 
Crescent, Kent's Hill, Milton Keynes. Make a note in your diary now! See 
http://www.mkno2id.org/ or contact milton.keynes at no2id.net for more 
information.

        3rd June - NO2ID Cambridge will have a stall at Cambridge
        Strawberry Fair

Saturday, 3rd June. Volunteers are needed to man the stall for 2 hour 
shifts from 10am until 10pm: please contact cambridge at no2id.net, or 
text/call Andrew Watson on 07710 469624. We signed up 500 supporters in 
5 hours last year - I'd like to triple that number this year. 
(Strawberry Fair info: http://www.strawberry-fair.org.uk)

        4th July - Homeland and Border Security Conference (£695+vat)

Tuesday, 4 July at QEII Conference Centre, London, UK. a one-day event 
that will look at the next steps for the security community. Featuring 
"key figures from the IT sector, government, the police, justice, and 
the international community". Cost - £695+vat for private sector, 
£175+VAT for public sector.
See http://govnet.co.uk/security/index.php

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      What just happened?

        Renew for freedom news

On May 15th campaigners from NO2ID Glasgow staged a stunt at Glasgow 
Passport Office as part of the renew for freedom campaign. Dressed in 
white boiler suits and wearing barcode masks they hung banners on the 
side of the passport office and posed for press photographers before 
queuing to renew their passports. However their renewal was cut short 
when they were told by the head of security that the facility for 
handing passport applications in at the door of the office had been 
"suspended". The campaigners, who were joined by local member of 
Scottish Parliament Patrick Harvie, had to make alternative renewal 
arrangements but on the plus side had a much better story to offer the 
local media.

Meanwhile NO2ID Brighton activists converged on Ship Street Post Office, 
in Brighton on May 10th, to put over the message: Renew your passport 
and buy ten years of freedom from the Government's ID card scheme. The 
Grim Reaper - with scythe in one hand and a passport in the other - 
became a focal point for passers-by as hundreds of passport renewal fact 
sheets were handed out and the message was blared out on a megaphone. 
Southern FM covered the story, which went out to around 350,000 
listeners on their drive time show. Extended coverage was also used by 
Capital Gold Sussex on the 6 o'clock news.

Other NO2ID groups around the country have managed to get a good deal of 
local press coverage for the campaign, well done to all involved.

        Dutch ID "tombola" fails to cut crime

Compulsory ID in the Netherlands has become a "tombola", says national 
daily De Volkskrant. Fines for non-compliance are being left up to the 
"mood" of individual police officers. The obligation to show ID was 
introduced on 1 January 2005 as an anti-crime measure. A full evaluation 
will be held in 2008, but the Dutch Public Ministry is already admitting 
that the new law has had no noticeable influence on crime rates, the 
paper claims. In fact, one minor crime wave may actually have been 
triggered by compulsory ID - thefts of identity documents have increased.

By the beginning of May, 81,709 fines had been handed out for failure to 
show ID, the Dutch monitoring centre MMI reports. About half of those 
fined refused to pay and are being taken to court. It also notes some 
function creep. Banks have taken to scanning people's ID as a condition 
of keeping their accounts open.

        Double Dutch Fines

A further illustration of the of Dutch ID cards fiasco is the fact that 
minor offences such as cycling without lights or urinating in a public 
space are now being double fined (one fine for the offence itself and 
one for not showing a valid ID). Those most fined were beggars, tramps 
and young people(the minimum age for ID cards in Holland is 14). 
Jurisprudence over the last year shows that a few thousand of the fines 
were in fact illegal because there was no valid reason for demanding 
identification. The Dutch government is planning a central database with 
the biometric details of every person obtaining  a new passport. From 
August 2006 a picture will be included on the chip, later on 
fingerprints of both index fingers will be added.

        Government have no cash for inquiry but ID cards budget is ok

The Home Secretary, John Reid, has announced that the Home Office cannot 
spare any funds for a full public inquiry into the bomb attacks that 
took place in London last year. But how does that square with the money 
to be spent on ID cards, which in any case will not prevent such 
incidents from occurring? The home office in response to a written 
question on 10th May stated that they have evaluated the effectiveness 
of ID cards in contributing to preventing and disrupting terrorism, but 
they went on to say that "for reasons relating to national security, it 
is not possible to go into details". In fact the recently released 
"narrative" into the events of last July reveal that the police were 
able to identify the "bombers" from membership and credit cards within 
just a few hours. If a full public inquiry would be a misdirection of 
funds, what would compulsory biometric ID cards be?

        Minister calls for better CCTV in order to integrate with
        National Identity Register

The BBC reports that Baroness Scotland has called for higher resolution 
CCTV equipment, which, she believes, could be used in conjunction with 
the National Identity Register to identify criminals.
http://www.no2id.net/news/newsblog/?p=405
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      "ID" in the news

        Criminal records mix-up uncovered - BBC News 21/5/06

Some 2,700 people have been wrongly labelled as criminals by the 
Criminal Records Bureau (CRB), it has emerged. The mistakes have led to 
some people being turned down for jobs.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5001624.stm

        Passport forgery law is repealed by accident - The Telegraph -
        18/5/06

The Home Office faced fresh controversy last night after ministers were 
accused of accidentally repealing the law which makes it an offence to 
have a forged passport. In an extraordinary development, it was claimed 
that Labour's Identity Cards Act had repealed the existing laws before 
the new laws to replace them come into force. Damian Green, the shadow 
immigration minister, said: "This latest Home Office disaster has 
accidentally made it legal to own a false passport."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&xml=/news/2006/05/18/npass18.xml

        Pet Shop Boys, Fundamental - The Guardian 19/5/06

Pet Shop Boys' ninth album touches on regime change, immigration, ID 
cards and the politics of fear. On Integral, the poker face slips 
slightly: as he protests against ID cards, you catch the faintest tremor 
of rage in Neil Tennant's voice.
http://shopping.guardian.co.uk/music/story/0,,1777909,00.html

        The Eternal Value of Privacy - Wired Magazine 18/5/06

The most common retort against privacy advocates - by those in favor of 
ID checks, cameras, databases, data mining and other wholesale 
surveillance measures - is this line: "If you aren't doing anything 
wrong, what do you have to hide?" Some clever answers: "If I'm not doing 
anything wrong, then you have no cause to watch me." "Because the 
government gets to define what's wrong, and they keep changing the 
definition." "Because you might do something wrong with my information." 
My problem with quips like these -- as right as they are -- is that they 
accept the premise that privacy is about hiding a wrong. It's not. 
Privacy is an inherent human right, and a requirement for maintaining 
the human condition with dignity and respect.
http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,70886-0.html

        Dining out on the ID card fiasco

When they make the film of the great ID card fiasco, it may well open 
with a dinner at the National Liberal Club, where the Great and Good of 
the IT industry warn of impending doom.The Real Time Club has invited 
Professor Ian Angell of the London School of Economics to dinner to 
explain just how bad it can be.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/05/19/id_card_fiasco_dinner/

        ID Cards: How will UK cope, if 646,323 passports have gone missing

Following the news that 1,500 UK passports have gone missing in transit 
to Government agencies in the past two years, revealed in a 
Parliamentary Answer to Stewart Hosie MP (SNP), it has now been revealed 
that 646,323 passports have been lost or stolen passports since the 
Identity and Passport Service's launch in December 2003 to this March.
http://www.publictechnology.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=5015&newlang=&topic=3&catid=0

        Should the new home secretary press ahead with the introduction
        of identity cards? - Computer Weekly 16/5/06

IT professionals appear split over the introduction of identity cards, 
with slightly more coming out against the planned scheme than in support 
of its introduction.(42% Yes, 58% No)
http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2006/05/16/215963/The+big+question+Should+the+new+home+secretary+press+ahead+with+the+introduction+of+identity.htm

        Toddlers used in trial of identity biometrics - Computer Weekly
        16/5/06

A Home Office department is fingerprinting under-fives, and may include 
babies, in a biometrics ID scheme. The trial ends the department's 
technological taboo on enrolling very young children in identity checks. 
Details of the scheme emerged after the Home Office released an internal 
report under the Freedom of Information Act. The UK could be one of the 
first countries to fingerprint under-fives -- and possibly the first. 
When Malaysian police last year proposed fingerprinting of babies there 
were strong protests from civil liberties groups in the country.
http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2006/05/16/215954/Toddlers+used+in+trial+of+identity+biometrics.htm

        Revealed: The cash-for-fake-ID scandal at the heart of the
        Government - Independent 17/5/06

An internal investigation at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) 
has found that civil servants are colluding with organised criminals to 
steal personal identities on "an industrial scale". Ministers have been 
privately warned that the investigation will show that hundreds of 
thousands of stolen personal details have been ripped off from official 
databases, often with inside help. Key personal details such as national 
insurance numbers can be used to commit benefit fraud, set up false bank 
accounts and obtain official documents such as passports.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article447792.ece

        ID card scheme slated by IBM researcher - PC Advisor Magazine
        19/5/06

Expensive, insecure and ineffective. The government's ID cards scheme 
has been slated by a researcher at IBM. Michael Osborne attacked the 
project on the grounds of cost, among a number of other reasons.
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=6208

(Please send me any items of interest you encounter - 
Editor(newsletter at no2id.net) )

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      What you can do

You can help us by:

        1. Promoting our 'renew for freedom' campaign throughout May

The ID card Act turns your passport into a one-way ticket to control of 
your identity by the government. If you renew your passport now you can 
buy ten years of freedom for £51. Encourage others to do the same and 
write to your local paper telling them about the renew for freedom 
website: http://www.renewforfreedom.org

        2.. Joining / donating

Please join NO2ID, if you are not already a paid-up member.
(There's a membership form at http://www.no2id.net/downloads/membForm.pdf)
OR
Donate some money towards campaign expenses. NO2ID, Box 412, 78 
Marylebone High Street, LONDON W1U 5AP

* We also maintain a list of things you can do on our website at 
http://www.no2id.net/getInvolved/other.php
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Publication details: © NO2ID 2006 - This document may be freely 
redistributed in one-to-one communications or physical copies as long as 
it is reproduced in its entirety including this notice. It may not be 
mass-mailed without the prior permission of NO2ID.

NO2ID, Box No.412, 78 Marylebone High Street, LONDON W1U 5AP
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