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The Government will announce details this month of a controversial national identity scheme which will allow people to use their mobile phones and social media profiles as official identification documents for accessing public services.
People wishing to apply for services ranging from tax credits to fishing licences and passports will be asked to choose from a list of familiar online log-ins, including those they already use on social media sites, banks, and large retailers such as supermarkets, to prove their identity.
Once they have logged in correctly by computer or mobile phone, the site will send a message to the government agency authenticating that user’s identity.
The Cabinet Office is understood to have held discussions with the Post Office, high street banks, mobile phone companies and technology giants ranging from Facebook and Microsoft to Google, PayPal and BT.
Fears that the UK would "sleep-walk into a surveillance society" have become a reality, the government's information commissioner has said.
There are up to 4.2m CCTV cameras in Britain - about one for every 14 people.
Private companies will be running large parts of the police service within five years, according to security firm head
Originally posted by woodwardjnr
None of it makes any sense. It all sounds like a recipe for disaster and fraud et alone the rivalry issues involved. I'd expect this madness from the former lot, but a coalition that prided themselves on being pro civil liberties once again seems to be obsessed with the same intrusive technologies.
A good site worth keeping an eye on s. www.bigbrotherwatch.org.uk...
Based on data covering more than 2,000 secondary schools and academies, Big Brother Watch warns that there are more than 100,000 CCTV cameras in secondary schools and academies across England, Wales and Scotland.
With some schools seeing a ratio of one camera for every five pupils, more than two hundred schools using CCTV in bathrooms and changing rooms and more cameras inside school buildings as outside, the picture across the country will undoubtedly shock and surprise many.
Q. Will the Government be able to use it to follow our movements online?
A. Authentication is done by trusted third parties and data will not be held centrally by the Government.
Our report on the DNA Database highlighted how the database has continued to grow in recent years, and that despite the passage of the Protection of Freedoms Act innocent people still have no timetable for when their DNA will be removed from the database.
Originally posted by Fazza!
I'm going to go against the grain here and ask "is this really that bad? Is it actually going to affect how we go about our day-to-day lives?"
Q. Will the Government be able to use it to follow our movements online?
A. Authentication is done by trusted third parties and data will not be held centrally by the Government.
Even if they were, surely people who aren't doing anything wrong won't have anything to worry about?
I would have thought that one of the biggest benefits to having online ID would be to get into clubs or go abroad just using your phone (essentially an online passport or driving license) but I couldn't find anything to suggest that this would be possible with the new scheme...edit on 13/10/2012 by Fazza! because: (no reason given)
Originally posted by riffer841
Awesome post, thanks highlighting this & putting it altogether so concisely. Real interesting stuff! If you have a group of people demonstrating in the Midlands area I'd like to know how to join up and join in?
Trusted third parties ....... really
A. Authentication is done by trusted third parties and data will not be held centrally by the Government.
As reported on the front page of today’s Cambridge News, a report to Cambridge city council, to be discussed next week, highlights how the Council signed off on an operation to install hidden CCTV cameras in the home of a resident, despite not having the legal authority to do so
This is why the police do have the power to install hidden cameras – and in this case it should have been the police investigating, not the council. While the Protection of Freedoms Act will now require a council seeks a magistrate’s approval for Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act operation, other public authorities will not.
The Communications Act 2003 makes it an offence to send a communication using a public electronic communications network if that communication is “grossly offensive”. In this case the Chief Crown Prosecutor for Wales, Jim Brisbane, concluded that on full analysis of the context and circumstances the message was not deemed to be so grossly offensive that criminal charges were sought.