Seizing the opportunity

The "politics live blog feed" threw up evidence at 3:49 pm that David Blunkett is still working tirelessly on behalf of his constituents friends..

3.49pm BST

David Blunkett, the Labour former home secretary, says the government could cut immigrant access to services by bringing in some kind of identity card. He holds up an example.

Here's a nice quote from an article from November 2008 concerning Blunkett's then overtures to one G Brown PM to be found "something to do now he had put all the embarrassments and misunderstandings that had resulted in his two 'resignations from the Cabinet' firmly behind him ...."

"He forgot to mention he has since last March been chairman of the international advisory committee of Entrust Inc, the Texas based security company which hopes to provide software for the UK ID cards system". 

His current entry in the Register of Member's Interests records that 

18 October 2012, I received £5,000 from Security Partnership Ltd, Unit 5, Winnersh Fields, Gazelle Close, Winnersh, Reading RG41 5QS, for a speech. Hours: 5 hrs. (Registered 30 October 2012)

1 August 2011

Bytes Technology Group, the parent company of Bytes Software Services, today announced the acquisition of IT security specialist, Security Partnerships Ltd. Security Partnerships currently helps companies achieve business advantage from secure IT solutions, providing Managed Services and Solutions to many corporate and public sector organisations.

David Blunkett Fun

Emailed in by Ralph M:

David Blunkett, 13 November 2003:

"There is "no obvious limit" to the number of immigrants who could settle in the UK, the home secretary has said. David Blunkett agreed some people felt swamped by new arrivals, but said legal migrants brought economic benefits. He said Britain had always been "crowded", and the current net inflow of 172,000 a year was sustainable."

David Blunkett, 26 October 2010 (in Financial Times, Letters to the editor):

"Sir, ...The government has just announced that it intends to set up a cross-departmental identity fraud unit, targeting what it rightly describes as a growing problem. I welcome this initiative.

However, the paradox is the government’s decision not simply to do away with identity cards and the associated identity register (which would have given us, for the first time a clear idea of who is legitimately in the country and on what basis), but with second-generation biometrics for passports as well."

Another lousy excuse for having ID cards

From The Metro:

Residents in Manchester will become the first people in Britain to be able to apply for ID cards. They can now directly apply to attend appointments from November 30 to have their photograph and fingerprints taken for the £30 cards at Manchester's passport office.

Junior Home Office Minister Meg Hillier said the cards would be particularly useful for students and young people as they would "save the cost and hassle" of getting into clubs and bars. "Really for a lot of people it's a day-to-day convenience thing. For a lot of young people ... they often take their passports to prove their identity in nightclubs and bars and the Passport Service sweeps these up every week. So for a lot of people it'll save the cost and hassle of taking your passport, risking losing it and instead you've got this very convenient little credit-sized card. I've got one and it's very useful."

They are really scraping the barrel now. If they wanted more people to go to clubs and bars, they could just scrap the smoking ban. We've had pubs for centuries and it's never been a problem to get in.

Then it gets absolutely laughable:

The ID cards are very hard to copy and are very secure, with biometric information stored on a database, she added. "This is not a database that can be downloaded onto disks," she said. "It's going to be held in different places so there'll be fingerprints and your picture on one database and your biographical information (on another), which is I must stress just the same as what's held by the Passport Service anyway ... and they will be linked together by another database."

The database would only be used for "serious crime issues" or identity concerns at a border...

I actually laughed when I saw this on the telly

I'm hardly his biggest fan, but IMHO he summarises the whole topic in thirty seconds and rounds it off with a punchline worthy of Prince Philip:

The EU & ID-cards: prohibition becomes permission

Researched by Denis Cooper:

Article 18 of the present TEC, ie the Treaty establishing the European Community, on pdf page 49 here runs as follows:

1. Every citizen of the Union shall have the right to move and reside freely within the territory of the Member States, subject to the limitations and conditions laid down in this Treaty and by the measures adopted to give it effect.

2. If action by the Community should prove necessary to attain this objective and this Treaty has not provided the necessary powers, the Council may adopt provisions with a view to facilitating the exercise of the rights referred to in paragraph 1. The Council shall act in accordance with the procedure referred to in Article 251.

3. Paragraph 2 shall not apply to provisions on passports, identity cards, residence permits or any other such document or to provisions on social security or social protection.

i.e. the EU has no powers over ID-cards and the like. However, Article 35 to the Treaty of Lisbon, on pdf page 11 here would remove that prohibition:

Article 18 shall be amended as follows ...

(b) paragraph 3 shall be replaced by the following:

For the same purposes as those referred to in paragraph 1 and if the Treaties have not provided the necessary powers, the Council, acting in accordance with a special legislative procedure, may adopt measures concerning social security or social protection. The Council shall act unanimously after consulting the European Parliament.

Thereby putting documentation concerning "social security or social protection" within the ambit of the EU, while removing the present prohibition on EU interference with respect to "passports, identity cards, residence permits or any other such document".

Meanwhile, Article 62(3) to the Treaty of Lisbon (pdf page 29), creates the power for the EU to take legally binding decisions about those other documents such as ID cards:

If action by the Union should prove necessary to facilitate the exercise of the right referred to in Article 17(2)(a), and if the Treaties have not provided the necessary powers, the Council, acting in accordance with a special legislative procedure, may adopt provisions concerning passports, identity cards, residence permits or any other such document. The Council shall act unanimously after consulting the European Parliament.

Denis concludes thusly:

"This is how the EU project proceeds; not in a manly, frank and transparent fashion, but slyly and surreptitiously. With cowardly, sneaky little specimens in back rooms conniving to gradually change the wording of complex treaties that ordinary people don't have the time to read and analyse, mainly because they're trying to earn an honest living, and with fellow travellers then pretending that it's all got nothing whatsoever to do with the EU."

and it's hard to disagree with that!

Stupid reader's letter of the day

From The FT:

Sir, With reference to Sue Cameron’s Notebook (Wanted: Champion earner for old rope, February 4), the advertisement for the National Identity Scheme commissioner makes abundantly clear that this is not a "selling job for ID cards". The commissioner will be an independent regulator who will act in the interests of the public.

When people talk to me about identity cards, one of their most frequent concerns is how they can be sure their data will be secured safely. The commissioner will have oversight of this, reporting at least once a year to parliament. The government is committed to genuine independence and powers of scrutiny for this role.

Meg Hillier, Minister for Identity, London.

"Act in the interests of the public"? Hmmm. How about just not having ID cards in the first place? What could possibly go wrong?

On a related topic, half a cheer for Chris Grayling of the Tories, who appears to oppose the travel data scheme, although whether out of principle or because it simply won't work on a technical level, is unclear.

"Children details on lost USB stick"

From The Metro:

A USB stick dropped by a Leeds City Council employee was found in a car by a member of the public. It had been reported missing but its owner told the council it did not contain any sensitive information.

In fact the unencrypted data on the device included the names, dates of birth, ethnicity, addresses and telephone numbers of around 5,000 nursery-age children living in the Leeds area.

It also contained confidential information about child protection and whether or not the children's parents claimed state benefits.

A Leeds City Council spokeswoman said: "We take issues of information security very seriously and are very sorry that this breach has occurred. We have guidance in place which seeks to prevent such incidents occurring including advice on using memory sticks.

ID-cards, anybody?

Yeah, right

According to an article in the Metro, titled "First ID cards for foreign workers":

The first phase of the government's controversial identity card scheme has come into force. Foreigners applying for student and marriage visas will be the first to need the cards to extend their stays in Britain as they are often suspec­ted of trying to abuse the immigration system.

Meanwhile, in other news:

Up to 400 criminals involved in a foreign prisoner scandal, including some of the worst offenders, have been told they can stay in Britain, the Home Office has disclosed. Less than a third of the 1,013 convicts have been deported two and half years after the scandal broke and subsequently cost Charles Clarke his job as Home Secretary. And many more could end up staying because 90 are still missing, 31 are in jail again and 160 are still going through the process.

Meanwhile on Planet Zog ...

"People can't wait for ID cards", allegedly.

"New ID cards for foreigners unveiled"

Underneath the print version of this article is a classic anecdote:

Anti-ID activist Phil Booth was denied the chance to debate the merits of ID cards at the Labour Party conference - because he did not have the right ID. He had travelled from the south coast to Manchester for the fringe meeting. 'How the hell do they expect to it for 60 million people', Mr Booth fumed.

"Foreign national ID card unveiled"

I agree with Phil Booth, in response to this crap:

Phil Booth, head of the national No2ID campaign group, attacked the roll-out of the cards as a "softening-up exercise". "The Home Office is trying to salami slice the population to get this scheme going in any way they can," Mr Booth told the BBC "Once they get some people to take the card it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The volume of foreign nationals involved is minuscule so it won't do anything to tackle illegal immigration."

Even the SNP and the LibDems seem to have called this one right.

Arguments in favour of ID cards (part 94)

Step 1) The gummint buggers up the voting system with all this postal and proxy voting, which are open doors for fraud and coercion.

Step 2) Fix it all again by having a national individual voter registration service.

"Massive failure over data loss"

Christina Speight's take on this latest shambles... "they want to force us to have ID cards so everything can be lost in one simple operation. It will cut down the number of press reports, I suppose!".

"ID cards could threaten privacy"

Isn't that the whole point?

Coalition of the willing (2)

UPDATE 24/05/08 - the online poll over here is currently standing at 24 'ayes' and 23 'noes', most heartening indeed! Why not drop in and have your say?

"HSBC loses customers' data disc"

Oops! I have often pointed out that banks etc. seem to manage to avoid this sort of thing happening, so why can't the government? There goes that argument, I suppose.

Question - will HSBC's knee jerk response to its 370,000 customers be that this is a good reason to introduce ID cards? Methinks not.

"MoD reveals loss of 11,000 ID cards"

Priceless.

National Minimum Wage & Tax Credits

At some book launch or other, David Blunkett MP (Lab, Sheffield Brightside) "will argue that the statutory rate should rise steadily to 50% of average wage levels if the Government is to meet its target of halving child poverty by 2010".

Righty-ho. Let's assume that they go mad and increase the NMW from £5.52 to £6.86 (half average wage). The speech refers to 'child poverty', so let's look at a single mum (oops! 'lone parent' in Newspeak) with two kids working 35 hours a week. She currently has a gross income of £193.20, after paying tax and claiming the main benefits, her household's net after housing costs according to DWP TBMT Table 1.3e (page 53) is £223 a week. If they up the NMW to £6.86, her gross income increases to £240 and her net household income to a princely ... £227 per week.

Wot? An extra £4 a week? Yup, that's right, £4.

Conversely, we all know that demand for labour is pretty price elastic - if you force employers to pay more than a job is worth, they will go bankrupt, and so people on the current NMW will lose their jobs. So single mum outlined above may well become unemployed as a result of the change, as a result of which her net household income would fall to £175 (DWP TBMT Table 2.1a).

Which is hardly a storming result is it? Half of such single mums with a job might see their net income increase by £4, the other half will see their net income fall by £48, not to mention the overall loss to the economy, lack of role model for her kids etc etc.

Finally, let's not forget that David Blunkett miraculously secured a job with Entrust, a company bidding for the ID-card nonsense, see Garrick Elder's letter in The Times of 24 Nov 2007 exactly five minutes after his two-year lobbying ban expired.

Said is said (4)

As a simplification campaigner, every now and then I stumble across a comment that deftly and accurately exposes the fundamental flaw in, and hence totally demolishes the basis for, a whole raft of legislation.

Today's corker comes courtesy of Longrider, on the broad topic of ID cards

"The only secure system of identity management is not to have one".

56 day detention?

As mentioned before, an authoritarian government needs to generate a climate of fear to stay in power. This 28, 56 and 90-day detention stuff helps Nulab achieve this goal in several ways:

1. It scares mainstream Muslims and acts as a recruiting sergeant for Islamists, who in turn scare mainstream Muslims even more as well as scaring the pants off the general public.

2. So there's a knock-on effect that Nulab have an excuse to step up 'security' measures, like ID cards and also have an excuse to fund Muslim and Islamist groups to make it look they are on the side of Muslims.

3. It makes people worry about how bad the terror threat might really be, along the lines of "Crikey, if we have to go to such extreme measures, it must be pretty dire"

4. Having stoked up Islamism and wound up mainstream Muslims and the general public to hysteria via steps 1. to 3. above, Nulab can then play the "tough on terror" card, the Brave Protecting Party.

5. And of course, this generates tons of taxpayer-funded work for 'human rights' lawyers, doublesplusgood!

It's all rather neat and circular and self-fulfilling, without making people the slightest bit safer and probably making things worse all round.