Information commissioner rules

"Nothing to hide, nothing to fear" - and yet the government has been leery of releasing information about the ID card scheme into the public domain. As reported in the Guardian and the Beeb the government now has 30 days in which to come up with an appeal as to why this information can't be released to the public domain, or to release it. Expect and indigestible set of figures on the morning after England are knocked out of (oh alright then, or win...) the world cup.

Some more fun at the expense of ID cards

[Emma writes] So you're reading a blog, and what's more it's a No2ID blog. That already proves to us that you're a media-savvy, intelligent and discerning human being. Nevertheless, the paranoid lawyer on my shoulder wants me to point out that the site featured is indeed a satire and I am in no way trying to suggest that the eventual forms for ID cards would be exactly like the ones on this site.

Forged passports illegal once more

... or always were illegal, depending on who you listen to. According to the Reg and Criminal Law Week the ID cards act managed to repeal the existing Forgery and Counterfeiting act, but did not reinstate the provisions that make owning a forged passport illegal. The Government denies and such loophole existed, but nevertheless plugged it last night with a statutory instrument. What happens to those charged with having forged passports in the three month period during which the loophole did (or did not) exist remains to be seen.

Just a little satire:

Life isn't all doom and gloom - this, from Youtube, should raise a wry smile:

US DHS concludes that RFID chips are unsuitable for "human tracking"

You may already be familiar with RFID chips as the tags that are sometimes found in books or attached to CDs and DVDs to prevent theft. Increrasingly, these chips are being added to passports as a way of permitting contactless reading of passport data.

However, in a recent report from the US Department of Homeland Security "disfavoured" the use of RFID tags for person ID purposes:

"RFID can reduce the delay when people pass through chokepoints that require identification. However, transmission of information from cards to verifiers is not a significant cause of the delay in such transactions compared to the authorization and verification steps.

"RFID permits the use of encryption, which can control forgery and tampering with
identification documents. This is not a unique characteristic of RFID, however. It is part of many digital technologies, including contact chips, bar codes, magnetic stripes, and watermarked printing.

Against these small incremental benefits of RFID are arrayed a large number of privacy concerns. RFID deployments’ digitally communicated information is easier to collect, save, store, and process, and is, therefore, more easily converted to surveillance than other methods. The silent, unnoticeable operation of radio waves means that individuals will always have difficulty knowing when they are being identified and what information is being communicated, leaving them vulnerable to increased security risks such as skimming and eavesdropping. "