[no2id-supporters] NO2ID Newsletter No.60
no2id-supporters at no2id.net
no2id-supporters at no2id.net
Thu Dec 7 14:54:55 GMT 2006
You've received this mail by opting-in to the "ID cards news" list, run
by The no2id Coalition, http://www.no2id.net/
The list information page is
http://www.no2id.net/mailman/listinfo/no2id-supporters , from which you
can change your subscription options. Any problems and you can mail the
listmasters, on listmaster at no2id.net
NO2ID
NO2ID Supporters' Newsletter No. 60 - 7th December 2006
*Contacting us:* Call or email the office - 020-7793-4005 or
(office at no2id.net). Please do not reply to this email. (The from address
is the not a working email address)
SPREAD OUR CHRISTMAS MESSAGE ABOUT THE BIG OPT OUT
Last week NO2ID, together with the foundation for information policy
research (fipr), launched 'The Big Opt Out' - a campaign to draw
people's attention to the growing database state in the guise of the
government's NHS Care Record System (see www.TheBigOptOut.org). The
system will form a huge centralised national database of patient medical
records and personal information (sometimes referred to as the NHS
'spine') with no opt-in or opt-out mechanism for patients at all. It is
likely that this system will be linked to the National Identity Register
via citizen's unique National Identity Register Number.
This Christmas we want to spread the word and get as many people to
request an opt-out from the system as we possibly can. It's a time of
the year when we all get in touch with family, friends and
acquaintances. So we ask that supporters use this spirit of friendship
to send the below email to everyone they know this Christmas.
/Email from: Phil Booth/
/Subject: Please don't send me a Christmas card this year/
Instead, use the stamp to send a copy of this letter to your GP:
http://www.TheBigOptOut.org/?page_id=23
Doing this will not only keep your own medical records where they
should be -- between yourself and your doctor - it will help protect
medical confidentiality for everyone by demonstrating that you, like
millions of others*, do not consent to your personal health
information being uploaded to NHS central systems and potentially
being made accessible to hundreds of thousands people - very few of
whom would have anything to do with your clinical care.
Opting out in this way will not affect your access to healthcare
but, if enough of us do it, it will send a powerful message to those
in Whitehall who are currently trying to seize all of everybody's
most private information without even seeking permission.
I was half-kidding about the Christmas card, but I'm deadly serious
about opting out. Please read the letter and, if you agree that your
privacy (and the privacy of everyone else in your family) is worth
the price of a stamp, fill it in and send it to your GP.
And if you could also forward this mail to *your* Christmas card
list, 2007 might end up being a very good New Year...
All the very best for the holiday season,
Phil
--
Phil Booth
National Coordinator, NO2ID
http://www.no2id.net
*The latest Medix poll shows that 52% of GPs would not upload their
patients' records to the spine, and only 13% would be willing to
proceed without consent. An even more recent survey by JRRT shows
that 53% of patients are opposed to automatic uploading of their
records, with only 27% in favour.
*** Stop Press *: Scroll to the end of this newsletter for an urgent
Freedom of Information Act action. ****
What's next?
Local groups
We have new local groups in Worcester (contact via worcester at no2id.net),
Tunbridge Wells (contact via tunbridge.wells at no2id.net) and Daventry
(contact via daventry at no2id.net) We have local groups around the country
and in 36 of the 69 locations of ID interrogation centres. If you can
help to set up a local group in one of the remaining towns then please
contact us at (office at no2id.net). A full list of local groups can be
found at www.no2id.net/localGroups
Calling all Labour party members
NO2ID is non partisan, but that doesn't mean we can't use political
affiliation where it matters. While a lot of our supporters are hostile
to the present Government, others are not. We are aware that a number of
our supporters and members are members of the Labour Party - several
Labour councillors or activists - and would prefer the Government simply
to change its mind about the appalling ID Card policy rather than be
removed from office in consequence.
If that is you we'd like to introduce you to others of like mind, and
encourage you to work together with a view to changing other Labour
movement hearts and minds. We'll do what we can to help, but really want
this to be an insider's thing, so that it is very clear the Labour
Campaign for Privacy (for example - whatever it seems best to call it),
is not interference by any of the opposition parties who already support
NO2ID.
Contact Guy Herbert (general.secretary at no2id.net) in the first instance,
and he will put you in touch and (not being Labour himself) keep out of
the way.
1st Tuesday of the month - Hackney NO2ID monthly meetings
The Hackney local group covering London E8, E5, E9 & N16 areas meet on
the first Tuesday of each month at 7:30 in Cafe Bohemia by Hackney
Central Station. New support very welcome to help raise awareness over
the coming months.
NO2ID Cambridge Campaign stall
Cambridge NO2ID will be running Saturday street stalls outside Cambridge
Guildhall from 10am onwards on 16th December, and every third Saturday
into the new year. Location: (http://tinyurl.com/eo42r). Volunteers to
help very welcome - contact Andrew Watson via cambridge at no2id.net, or on
07710 469624.
Saturdays 1pm - 3pm - NO2ID Edinburgh Campaign stall
After a short break during the Edinburgh Festival NO2ID Edinburgh has
resumed its regular Princes Street campaigning stall on Saturdays. We
shall be at our usual location at the east end of Princes Street,
opposite the Balmoral Hotel, from 1pm - 3pm this coming Saturday. We
use our stall to raise public awareness of the Identity Cards scheme,
collect donations and entries for the NO2ID petition, and also to
increase membership of our group. Please do pop by for a chat if you
happen to be around. We shall be aiming to have the stall up and
running most Saturdays, and new volunteers are always very welcome. You
can see photos of our stall and contact details at:
www.no2id-scotland.net/edinburgh/.
7th December - NO2ID Nottingham - 'Fingerprinting in Pubs' meeting
Thursday, 7th December 7.30pm - NO2ID campaigners in Nottingham will be
"plotting" in the oldest pub in Britain: Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem,
Brewhouse Yard, Nottingham.NG1 6AD (See http://www.triptojerusalem.com/)
12th December - Highbury NO2ID Meeting
Tuesday, 12th December 6.30 for a 7pm start at Jorene Celeste pub on 153
Upper Street. All welcome!
13th December - Skypecast Webchat
Wednesday, 13th December at 7:30pm. An opportunity to get together with
other NO2IDers from across the country and talk about highs and lows of
being a NO2IDer. The chat room will be open to visitors so you may get
the opportunity to practice your persuasion skills. I expect we'll be
chatting about recent developments until about 8:15pm at which point
there will be an online meeting for the Bristol sub-group. (Skype
sofwtare required - see http://www.skype.com/download/). Further details
will be posted shortly on the NO2ID forum at
http://forum.no2id.net/viewtopic.php?t=14275
15th November - Manchester NO2ID - Piccadilly Area "Pub Crawl"
Wednesday, 15th November, 5:30pm - 6:30pm, we will again be meeting up
to distribute NO2ID flyers and leaflets around local pubs and
businesses. We'll meet at the Market Street corner of Piccadilly
Gardens, near Boots and Somerfield, divide up into small groups and fan
out into town, asking for permission to deposit NO2ID material where it
will be found and read by members of the public. It doesn't matter if
you've not come along to an event before, just show up and look for the
No2ID badges, T-shirts and flyers.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
What just happened?
Thanks for your passport data
Many thanks to everyone who sent us data from their passport. We had a
superb response - in a single day we tripled our data set and since then
patterns have been jumping right out. Watch out for more news from us on
the government's insecure ePassports soon.
National Union of Journalists affiliates to NO2ID
A ballot of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) members has resulted
in the union affiliating to NO2ID. Just under 65% of those voting backed
affiliation to the campaign. The vote followed on from a motion passed
at the unions Annual Delegate Meeting (ADM) earlier this year. Christina
Zaba, Chair of Bristol NUJ branch said: "I feel proud to belong to the
NUJ today. The results of this ballot shows that our members are aware
of what is going on around them. NO2ID and the NUJ are not averse to
voluntary ID cards, but we are against this system which allows the
government, and everyone else, to spy on us".
EU: Biometric EU ID cards by the back door
Statewatch reports that: "The Justice and Home Affairs Council on 4-5
December is to adopt - without debate - a Resolution on 'security
standards' for national identity cards across the EU: Draft Resolution:
EU doc no: 15356/06 The EU does not have the legal power to impose
'security standards' and biometrics on national ID cards. However, this
'non-binding' Resolution opens the way (enables) for biometrics to be
taken (with the same standards as already agreed for EU passports, that
is, fingerprints) and be added to ID cards (together with other
'optional' biometrics) where the ID cards are used for 'travel
purposes', which they are throughout the Schengen area. As this is a
so-called 'non-binding' ('soft law') measure national and European
parliaments (let alone civil society) have no say."
The draft resolution also proposes that EU ID cards be International
Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) compliant. The ICAO having created
the ePassport are now focusing their attention on a standardised ID card.
See www.statewatch.org/news/ and the draft resolution(pdf) can be
downloaded from http://tinyurl.com/v4dua
fipr publishes children's databases report
The foundation for information policy research (fipr) have produced a
report, commissioned by the Information Commissioner that look as
Children's databases. The report, "Children's Databases: Safety and
Privacy", analyses the databases being built to collate information on
children in education, youth justice, health, social work and elsewhere.
These systems are linking up through the new Information Sharing Index.
Download the report from www.fipr.org/childrens_databases.pdf
Edinburgh group campaigning update
As there will be elections for the Scottish Parliament and local
councils in May 2007, the Edinburgh NO2ID group is planning to intensify
its campaigning during the run-up to the elections. An initial group
planning meeting was held on 4th December when a series of individual
and group actions were agreed. All the parties represented in the
Scottish Parliament, apart from Labour, have declared themselves
against ID cards. In Scotland there is also the question of the Scottish
National Entitlement Card, an ID card in all but name, which has been
misleadingly represented to the over 60s and the disabled as a simple
bus pass.
NO2ID 'Civil liberty vs. the database state' meeting
Last Wednesday, in a packed Imperial College lecture theatre in west
London, NO2ID held a public meeting 'Civil liberty vs. the database
state'. The meeting was the launch pad for 'The Big Opt Out' - a
campaign focusing on the centralised database at the heart of the new
NHS IT programme (Connecting for Health (CfH)). Sir Malcolm Rifkind MP
said: "The case for identity cards or other large databases must be
based upon hard evidence. These criteria are not being met on either ID
cards or other measures that restrict civil liberties." Ross Anderson,
professor of security engineering at Cambridge, spoke about the need to
opt out of databases like the NHS Care Record System to give cover to
those that HAVE to opt out, adding that it is a "civil duty to opt out
of everything you can". Anderson also questioned the Conservative
parties resolve in stopping the database state, pointing out that the
National Identity Register's citizen index - the National Identity
Register Number is the eGovernment keystone. He pointed out that
opposition parties must work out how to run government and look at all
of the databases. Journalist Henry Porter pointed out that politicians
don't get the danger that the database state represents and so are not
protecting us from it - "Almost no politicians get it from the heart,"
he said.
Telegraph/YouGov poll suggests mass resistance to ID cards
A new poll commissioned by the Telegraph and YouGov seems to suggest
what NO2ID have long believed - that a large number of UK citizens will
strongly reject ID cards. Though the poll found that only 39% of
respondents were opposed to ID cards 21% of those opposed said they
would refuse to have a card even if it meant paying a small fine, 7%
said they would refuse even if it meant a long fine, 15% said they would
refuse even if it meant a prison sentence - extrapolating to the whole
population in the weirdy way that pollsters are wont to do that's around
1.5 million. With prisons already severely overcrowded perhaps the best
thing the Home Office could do is scrap ID cards.
See http://www.yougov.com/archives/pdf/TEL060101024_3.pdf
Advertising Standards Authority Adjudication and NO2ID ad
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) have found in favour of NO2ID
after a barrage of eight complaints against our
Blair-with-strategically-placed-barcode Guardian advert. The ASA in
their ruling noted that "the ad had been intended to encourage
discussion on a sensitive political issue. We considered that, although
the ad may have been distasteful to some, it was unlikely to be seen as
making a serious comparison between Tony Blair and Hitler but instead as
highlighting a lobbying groups opinion that ID cards should not be
introduced because of the threat to civil liberty they posed. We
concluded that, as such, the ad was unlikely to cause serious or
widespread offence."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"ID" in the news
Heathrow begins biometric trials - BBC News on-line 6/12/06
Airline passengers at Heathrow airport are being invited to sign up for
a British trial of biometric security scanners. Travellers will be able
to use fingerprint, facial recognition and eye scanning to bypass
boarding queues.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6211122.stm
MySpace Gets (Way) Personal with Sentry - Dr Dobbs Database Blog
6/12/06
MySpace has teamed with Sentinel Tech Holding Corp., creators of the
Sentry system for "voluntary" ID authentication and background checking,
to implement, within 30 days, a solution that automatically screens
MySpace profiles to determine if page-owners are convicted sex offenders.
http://www.ddj.com/blog/databaseblog/archives/2006/12/myspace_gets_wa.html
DH rejects patient opt-out requests - eHealth Insider 4/12/06
The Department of Health has rejected patients' requests to stop their
information being uploaded to the NHS data spine. On Friday the DH wrote
to patients who had sent in a coupon from the Guardian newspaper
requesting to opt-out telling them that would not be able to do. The
response has been criticised by the British Medical Association who
claim ministers originally promised that patients would be able to opt
out and that to deny that right would breach the Data Protection Act.
http://www.ehiprimarycare.com/news/item.cfm?ID=2316
'Students should face pre-exam security tests to stamp out
fraud' - Daily Mail 4/12/06
A Government-backed report is recommending tougher measures such as
fingerprint or retina scanning to prevent students drafting in friends
to take exams in their place.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=420481&in_page_id=1770
Most patients reject NHS database in poll - The Guardian 30/11/06
A national campaign was launched last night to persuade people to refuse
on privacy grounds to have their medical records uploaded to a national
database. Guy Herbert, of the NO2ID group, which is also campaigning
against the introduction of identity cards, said: "We'd like to get up
to a million people to contact their GPs."
http://society.guardian.co.uk/e-public/story/0,,1960271,00.html
Fingerprint checks at airports mooted - The Telegraph 28/11/06
Airline passengers are to face routine fingerprinting, with the
Government already involved in talks with the aviation industry over the
installation of scanners at airports. Discussions began before the
thwarting of the alleged plot to blow up transatlantic flights in August
and the first "proof of concept" trials of the technology will be
unveiled at Heathrow within the next few weeks.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/11/27/ntravel127.xml
EU: New biometric ID cards are not secure, warns EU FIDIS
project - europa.eu 27/11/06
The EU-funded FIDIS (Future of Identity in the Information Society)
Network of Excellence (NoE) has issued a stark warning that
implementation of the current generation of biometric travel ID will
dramatically decrease security and privacy, and increase the risk of
identity theft.
http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/6293/194
Child database 'will ruin family privacy' - The Telegraph 23/11/06
Parents will be devalued and family privacy shattered by the mass
surveillance of all 12 million children in England and Wales, says a
report today commissioned by Parliament's Information Commissioner. In
what is likely to be a major embarrassment to Tony Blair, it says
proposals for a £224 million database containing details of every child
will waste millions of pounds, undermine parental authority and actually
put children in more danger.
http://tinyurl.com/y2crpl
Irish government waves in digital fingerprinting - The Register
23/11/06
Irish law enforcement agencies closed an EUR18m deal on Wednesday to
procure digital fingerprinting technology from the private sector. The
Director General of the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service
(INIS) and the Commissioner of An Garda Siochana signed a contract with
an international consortium to design and implement a new integrated
electronic fingerprint system (AFIS) for police and immigration service use.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11/23/irish_gov_introduces_fingerprinting/
Whitehall readies ID card action plan - Computing 23/11/06
The newly-formed Identity and Passport Service (IPS) will publish an
action plan for the national biometric ID card scheme next month, and
procurement will start next summer. IPS chief executive James Hall
announced the new details -- the first since the start of the Home
Office review in the early summer -- at an industry briefing last week.
http://www.computing.co.uk/computing/news/2169313/whitehall-readies-id-card
(Please send me any items of interest you encounter -
Editor(newsletter at no2id.net) )
------------------------------------------------------------------------
What you can do
You can help us by:
1. Joining NO2ID or donating to the campaign
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, 19-21
Crawford Street, LONDON W1H 1PJ
2. Helping to spread our message
Tell your friends and any organisations that you belong to about the
NO2ID campaign and that you are supporting it. Most people are scarcely
aware of the government's ID database project, and few understand the
dangers. Feel free to redistribute this newsletter to acquaintances.
* We also maintain a list of things you can do on our website at
http://www.no2id.net/getInvolved/other.php
------------------------------------------------------------------------
** STOP PRESS ***
KEEP GOVERNMENT HONEST
How did the Guardian find out the death rates of cardiac surgeons in
hospitals across the UK? A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
How were 22 Local Authorities made to publish their restaurant
inspection reports? A FOIA request.
How did NO2ID find out that the Identity Cards Programme was spending
almost £100,000 per day on consultants? A FOIA request.
All this could end.
The very government that introduced the Freedom of Information Act in
1998 is now trying to cripple it. The government wants to change the
rules so that sensitive or problematic requests could more easily be
turned down.
Vital investigation done by groups like NO2ID, heroes like Mark
Dziecielewski (NO2ID Advisory Board member, and writer of
http://spyblog.org.uk/ who has forced the Treasury to hire lawyers in
its attempt to keep the ID cards 'Gateway' reviews secret) and concerned
citizens across the UK could be blocked completely.
If you care about holding government (any government) to account or want
to preserve open access to information about public bodies - be they
your local council, hospital, school or whatever - it is important that
you act NOW. The government may decide as soon as next Thursday, 14th
Dec. just how badly it's going to hobble the Act.
Please write to your MP using www.writetothem.com - which will fax your
letter to your MP for free.
Whatever else you write, do make sure to say that your fax is NOT to be
treated as a consultation response, and that you do not want the
government to introduce ANY new restrictions on the Freedom of
Information Act.
For further information on FOIA, and this urgent action to defend our
right to know please visit:
http://www.cfoi.org.uk/
Keep government honest!
Phil Booth
National Coordinator, NO2ID
-------------------------------------------------------------------
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 412, 19-21 Crawford Street, LONDON W1H 1PJ
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.no2id.net/pipermail/no2id-supporters/attachments/20061207/a61add71/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 8757 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.no2id.net/pipermail/no2id-supporters/attachments/20061207/a61add71/attachment.jpeg>
More information about the no2id-supporters
mailing list