Big Brother Watch Team
Big Brother Watch is bringing together key Labour voices to discuss the left case against Covid IDs.
Our event ‘Civil Liberties in a Crisis: the left case against Covid IDs’ will be coming to Brighton on the 27th September – 2-4pm, at the Old Ship Hotel during Labour Party Conference.
Continue reading
Big Brother Watch Team
I have not forgotten that fifteen years ago, the Prime Minister wrote in this paper that if someone in authority demanded he show an ID card he would “physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it.”
28 May 2021 — Big Brother Watch
“None of us likes the idea of Covid certification”
Not our words, the words of Michael Gove…
Yesterday he appeared in front of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee to receive a grilling on Covid passes. To say that it made for awkward viewing would be putting it politely!
1 July, 2010 — NO2ID
+ NOT SCRAPPED ENOUGH +
“NO2ID – aren’t you shutting up shop now? You’ve won” is a question some are asking. But associating the campaign solely with the ID **card** – as iconic as that battle has been – rather misses the point.
NO2ID’s goal was never *just* to stop the ID card – it was, and is, to stop the creation of the database behind it – and any equivalent national registers used to manage the population, what we named the database state. The abolition of ID cards may be a significant victory, but the war is far from over.
We appreciate that many people joined and support NO2ID because of our campaign against the ID card. Those who know us and who fight with us will realise we’ve been campaigning consistently on numerous other fronts. The database state is still growing. It still touches many different aspects of your life.
From medical confidentiality and the right to opt out of the Summary Care Record to the unlawful retention of innocent people’s profiles on the DNA database; from snooping on communications data (your phone, e-mail and browsing records) to rampant government sponsored data trafficking, such as was proposed in Clause 152 of the Coroners & Justice Bill; from highlighting the dangers of population registers and systems like Contactpoint to pressing for more meaningful control over our own personal information – NO2ID must go on.
Should you find yourself having to ‘justify’ the continued existence of NO2ID to friends or colleagues, you might like a copy of our latest information sheet. You can download it here:
www.no2id.net/downloads/Not_scrapped_enough.pdf
The ID scheme is not dead yet. We’re working hard to ensure that it is scrapped comprehensively – and that the Identity Documents Bill (the ID-scrapping legislation currently before Parliament) doesn’t re-enact some of the very same problems we’ve been fighting these past six years.
We couldn’t have done it without you. And your support will be more important than ever, as we move into Phase II.
(To be continued…)
*Contacting us:* Call or email the office – 020-7793-4005 or (office@no2id.net).
+ ELECTION SPECIAL +
We’re sending the newsletter early this week, so that you have it in time for the election. NO2ID remains rigorously non-partisan: our battle is not with one party or another, but rather against the database state. This principle enables us to work with, and be supported by, people from across the political spectrum and helps make our arguments all the more effective. Evidence of this may be seen in the fact that by 30th April, opposition parties’ 2010 manifesto commitments on the National Identity Scheme stood as follows:
* The Conservatives (standing 631 candidates) will “scrap ID cards, the National Identity Register and the ContactPoint database”;
* The Liberal Democrats (631 candidates) will “scrap intrusive Identity Cards and have more police instead”. They also intend to “scrap plans for expensive, unnecessary new passports with additional biometric data”;
*Contacting us:* Call or email the office – 020-7793-4005 or (office@no2id.net).
+ ASK YOUR CANDIDATES +
Two weeks from now Parliament will have changed. Whoever forms the next government, over a quarter of MPs will be new to the job. Many may not know how much the database state matters to their constituents, or how deeply it will affect them.
They need to be informed and you can help. Starting now.
Over the next fortnight make it a point to ask your local candidates one of NO2ID’s seven questions for candidates at a hustings meeting or in a personal letter or e-mail. Listen carefully to what they say, and let them know you’ll be following up. One of them will be your MP and needs to know you care.
NO2ID is looking for candidates to have their own opinions on these questions. We aren’t seeking to punish people for giving ‘wrong’ answers or to antagonise them [1]. What we are hoping is to get them outside pat party lines and looking at the issues for themselves. Even if they disagree with us now, a willingness to think about it will make them approachable in the next parliament.
You can download a list of our seven questions for candidates here:
15 April, 2010 — Power2010
Dear Friend,
I value my freedom and my privacy. Do you?
Our government doesn’t. The ID card scheme passed by the last Parliament will mean over 50 categories of data being held on you, just one of which is all 10 of your fingerprints.
The ID database, or National Identity Register, will track every significant transaction you make for the rest of your life – and you will face stiff financial penalties if you don’t keep the official record on you up to date.
The database state treats citizens like criminal suspects. It’s intrusive, controlling and it’s just plain wrong.
Email your PPCs to tell them that you’re not a criminal and you don’t want to be treated like one.
Not only does the database state irrevocably alter the balance of power between state and citizen – by sanctioning official control of sensitive personal details it makes you and your family less safe.
Holding vast amounts of personal information and passing it around for administrative convenience makes you more vulnerable to fraud, errors, breaches, insider abuse and arbitrary consequences when the computer says NO.
Protect your freedom and your privacy. Say no to the database state:
http://www.power2010.org.uk/notacriminal
Thank you
Phil Booth
NO2ID
*Contacting us:* Call or email the office – 020-7793-4005 or (office@no2id.net).
+ MANDATING ID +
While the Minister for Identity tries conjuring up possible uses for the ID card – more fantasy than reality, but telling nonetheless [1] – the Home Office has continued to use every trick in the book to manufacture ‘demand’.
Its latest manoeuvre, buried in yet another obscure regulation – The Licensing Act 2003 (Mandatory Licensing Conditions) Order 2010 – is due to come into force this October. This measure, undebated by MPs and passed on the nod, is one of the first cases where showing ID for an ordinary everyday function is being written into statute.
Less formal age checks creep ever wider, but from this autumn a pub or club MUST have an age verification policy, and MUST ask anyone who looks as if they might be under the age specified in that policy (which could be 18 but could equally be any arbitrarily chosen age which makes the premises safe(?)) to show “identification bearing their photograph, date of birth and a holographic mark”.
31 August, 2009 — Global Research
Electronic ID cards have made alarming progress towards becoming universal, around the world. Already, over 2.2 billion people, or 33% of the world’s population, have been issued with ‘smart’ ID cards. Of those, over 900 million have biometric facial and fingerprint systems. On present plans, over 85% of the world’s population will have smart ID cards by 2012. Most of the remaining population won’t have escaped – largely, they are already enrolled in earlier generation ID systems, often in repressive states, such as Myanmar (Burma).
Understandably, campaigns against the introduction of ID cards have tended to play up the problems with ID systems, presenting them as being unworkable and creating unmanageable problems with privacy invasion, fraud, unauthorised database access, organised crime, reliability of biometric recognition, etc. As a result, a substantial number of people believe mandatory ID cards ‘just won’t happen’.
It’s long past time to stop burying our heads in the sand. There are no obstacles to the worldwide introduction of mandatory, electronic ID cards
All those problems with ID systems may be real, but they are not enough to stop implementation, primarily because these are problems that will affect people as individuals, not their governments – our problem, not theirs.
There has been hardly any meaningful debate about one of the biggest issues of our time. Most ordinary people don’t like the idea, but project goes ahead anyway.
It’s also time to look at what ID systems are really intended to do, not the public justification. Since governments probably always knew that ID cards wouldn’t stop terrorism, organised crime, ID theft, fraud, etc., there has to be some other reason for their introduction – and it appears to be a reason that governments don‘t want to own up to, in public.
29 July, 2009
Over the last few years the Government has mislaid a staggering amount of our personal information. In this clever short film, Liberty asks whether they can be trusted with even more data. Narrated by Liberty supporter Simon Callow and made voluntarily for Liberty by professional film-maker Will MacNeil, with post-production by Unit, the film underlines the danger of creating such a massive database.
http://widgets.vodpod.com/w/video_embed/Groupvideo.3084817
Writers, pop stars, lawyers and politicians from across the party spectrum yesterday issued a call to arms. They joined the largest ever campaign across Britain to warn of the erosion of freedoms and the emergence of surveillance techniques.
by Tracy McVeigh, chief reporter
(The Guardian)
The government and the courts are collaborating in slicing away freedoms and pushing Britain to the brink of becoming a ‘database’ police state, a series of sold-out conferences in eight British cities heard yesterday.
In a day of speeches and discussions, academics, politicians, lawyers, writers, journalists and pop stars joined civil liberty campaigners yesterday to issue a call to arms for Britons to defend their democratic rights.
Continue reading
Fans of ID cards often say, if you’ve done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear. They are naive.
For more information, and to find out what YOU can do to help stop the database state, visit:
Taken from the leaked government document
From: Cory Doctorow
Phil from the UK anti-ID-register group NO2ID sends in this nugget — note the call to action there. We’ve got a sensitive government document revealing the British government’s plan to trick us into a database state and we need as many copies as possible, as quickly as possible!
UK campaigners NO2ID this morning enlisted the help of bloggers across the world to spread a leaked government document describing how the British government intends to go about “coercing†its citizens onto a National Identity Register. The ‘ID card’ is revealed as little more than a cover to create a official dossier and trackable ID for every UK resident – creating what NO2ID calls ‘the database state’.
NO2ID’s national coordinator, Phil Booth, exhorted bloggers, freedom lovers and anyone who gives a damn about personal privacy to mirror the annotated document on their site.
“The charade is over. While ministers try to bamboozle the British public with fairytales about fingerprints, officials are plotting how to dupe and bully the population into surrendering control of their own identities.â€
“Biometric ID cards are a sham; a magician’s flourish to cover the biggest identity fraud there has ever been.†— Phil Booth
23 November 2004
W A R N I N G
Have you seen this man? Is he bothering you? Does he know your wife? Is he the father of your children? If you see him in the neighbourhood report him immediately. This man is dangerous. He will ask you a lot of questions about yourself and ask to take intimate pictures of your body. He may ask you for a DNA sample. (Text Edward Teague)
The New Dark Age 