27/10/2008 by deepspacemillar.

I have heard from several people who managed to save entire copies of the MyLifeMyID forum, and who have been dilligently been going through the saved pages, reconstructing the links etc in an effort to make a complete archive of the site, available to all. Recently, these efforts have been successful, and I have heard that at least one complete archive is soon to be uploaded to the net. While this site will not be hosting the files directly - this post is now a mirror page linking to any archives.
http://rapidshare.com/files/158489851/mylifemyid-original.zip
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=1S9YPF70
http://sharebee.com/c2bf2260
Copy maintaining original layout and design

http://rapidshare.com/files/158491574/mylifemyid-text.zip
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=6C720IS0
http://sharebee.com/aedf148f
A stripped down text version

Many thanks to ‘David Blunkett’ and “The Mysterious Mr S” for the great work.

I would just like to point out that the views expressed do not neccessarily match my own (unless of course, I wrote them).

Any new links or changes, please contact admin(at)id-watch.co.uk

UPDATED: added links to ’sharebee’ mirrors

Posted in ID cards | 1 Comment »

27/10/2008 by deepspacemillar.

According to Engadget, the Police will within the next 18 months start using mobile fingerprint scanners to carry out identity checks right in the street, at a cost of £30 million+.
The new scanners will allow police to check a persons fingerprints against records in a database (likely ID database/police databases). They will be used on those suspected of a crime when a positive ID cannot be verified. The new scanners will be able to receive pictures of suspects and other data over ’secure’ connections. The Police claim that it will greatly speed up processing suspects, help identifying bodies at the scene, and have other uses.

Originally found over at the Guardian

Posted in ID cards | 1 Comment »

27/10/2008 by deepspacemillar.

Ray made several comments to the Economist last week after a story that mentioned the MyLifeMyID site. I’ve put both these comments below:

“First the declaration of interest, I am one of the Admins from the mylifemyid site and a director of Virtual Surveys, the company that ran and hosted mylifemyid.Secondly, a couple of quibbles. Surely, the use of the word “purportedly” is a tad tendentious. Over 50 million online ads were placed in locations such as Bebo and Facebook to promote the site, and over 1000 young people have indeed had their say. You are right to say many people dismissed the site as propaganda, but most of them said that before they saw the content. It is hard to describe a website which hosts so many anti-ID Card comments and Government propaganda.Finally, some information. The site reached its scheduled end on October 15, after three months of listening. The content of the site is now being analysed and a report will be presented to the Identity and Passport Service, who have committed to publishing the report on their website.”

and the second…

“Oops! What I meant (and what I thought I had typed) was “It is hard to describe a website which hosts so many anti-ID Card comments as Government propaganda.”

Very few comments were taken down from the site, and these were for abuse of the Ts&Cs, general abuse, or because they had been flagged by users as offensive. There were many posts that made comments about the site, its motivation, the way it was moderated, and except for the handful that fell foul of the abuse rule, they remained on the site.

I take Morel’s point about the case for not removing this type of project at the end of its period of action. We will certainly be recommending that future projects provide some sort of ongoing, public record of the discourse.

For example, I would be happy to debate whether the moderation was neutral or biased, but, without the material being available to all parties, I would be expecting people to simply take may word for it, and that would be unfair (and not necessarily likely to happen).

Ray Poynter, an Admin at mylifemyid”

———————————————————————————————————————————

Firstly, I’d like to address the comment that “many people dismissed the site as propaganda, but most of them said that before they saw the content”. What forum were you on, Ray? A lot of users who were on the site for a great deal of time were (and still are) convinced it was a proaganda exercise. There were quite a few individuals expressed this sentiment, and while personally I don’t quite agree, I definitely see their point. Many came to the site to contribute and found a number of questions that displayed what they interpreted as bias. The main page of the site even had a video that many felt was blunt PR spin.

Secondly, your point about it being hard to call the site propaganda when the replies were so anti-ID is pretty weak. One must distinguish between comments made by Virtual Surveys and those of its users. The fact that a number of Virtual Surveys posts were very much seen as and attacked as propaganda challenges your view. Just because so many people disagreed and refuted the posts doesn’t mean it wasn’t propaganda, it just means it was bad propaganda. The bias in several posts was glaringly obvious, especially in earlier stages of the forum. So I’ll have to disagree with you Ray, I think people have every justification to describe it as a propaganda exercise.  Whether that was actually the intention remains to be seen, but I don’t think you have a leg to stand on when you claim people couldn’t/didn’t call it propaganda.

Finally - you mention that ‘very few’ comments were taken down from the site. Sorry to burst your bubble Ray, but at least one entire thread disappeared from the forum. All sorts of different actions could have been taken that would have resolved any situation you had with an individual thread - editing some offensive language, warning users, locking the thread, etc etc. You chose the sledgehammer option, and deleted a thread that had from what I recall >30 posts within it. There were also lots of posts moved - either to a different forum or to the purgatory known as ‘miscellaneous posts’, where finding the post that had been moved was often rather difficult. There was at times, significant intervention on the forum where a lot more subtle action would have done much better - and so I can’t agree with you on this statement either.

All in all, I disagree with your responses - you have a much more positive interpretation of events than I.

Posted in ID cards | 3 Comments »

22/10/2008 by admin.

I received an email today from a user who couldn’t post a comment because of issues with the ‘did you pass math’ plugin I was using to avoid spam. EDIT: turns out this wasn’t the problem, so I’ve turned it back on. The problem seemed to be the hashcash plugin when using a proxy site to view the page. I have since deactivated the plugin, and hopefully these issues should be resolved. Sorry to anyone who was having problems with this.
If problems persist or if there are any other issues that are evident, please feel free to contact admin here or by leaving a comment.

Posted in ID cards | 1 Comment »

22/10/2008 by deepspacemillar.

Over the last few days, I’ve been sending several emails to Virtual Surveys to ask some questions I had about a few issues. So to keep you in the loop, here is what I have found out.

Firstly, and probably most importantly - Virtual Surveys will have no more interaction with the MyLifeMyID users. That means there will be no discussion of the report, no reinstatement of the forum in any form, and generally no further action whatsoever. They will provide a link to their report on the IPS website when it appears from the current blank MyLifeMyID page. Virtual Survey’s position seems to be that they have fulfilled their obligation to the Home Office/IPS in terms of collecting the research, and therefore will not dedicate any further resources as it isn’t in their contract.

Secondly - Since VS themselves are effectively abondoning us, I asked if it were possible for them to send out an email to all (ex) users with a link to here or any other site where users could continue to discuss the ID card issues and the VS/IPS report. Although they sympathised that users no longer had a means of discussing the report, they refused to do so on the grounds that it would apparently not be part of the research project, and therefore their use of the email addresses for this would violate MRS guidelines and the Data Protection Act.

Now, I fully understand some of their positions here. Obviously, linking to what is essentially my personal blog would be almost an endorsement of it, and that isn’t really acceptable. I didn’t want this to occur, nor was I expecting it to, it wouldn’t be good practice. However, considering the total deletion of the MyLifeMyID forum, I thought it would have been perfectly legal and reasonable to provide a number of links to users of pro and anti ID sites where they can continue to stay informed and debate the matters. For them to have done nothing strikes me as a bit callous, however, I’m not a legal expert on this, and they may indeed be forced into this hand. It is however hugely disappointing that VS will not provide a forum for discussion of their report. I believe it would be beneficial to them in many ways to do so, but they have made their position clear.
I have since had the idea that providing links on the mostly blank holding page at MyLifeMyID would mean no problems with email addresses and the DPA. However, I do think this is likely to be met with the same response. I think Virtual Surveys simply aren’t interested anymore.

Finally - following up on the last post, I have sent an email off to Virtual Surveys asking for Ray Poynter to comment on or clarify what exactly he meant in his comments to the Economist. I will post a follow up to this as soon as I can…
EDIT: Ray has responded - please check the previous entry for details.

Posted in ID cards | 5 Comments »

21/10/2008 by deepspacemillar.

On my interwebs session the other day, before writing up the ‘Some interesting links’ post, I came across this story on the Economist website.
It has a good commentary about the recent developments on ID-cards, including a section on the MyLifeMyID site and its recent closure. I had more or less forgotten about it until today, when user Morel’sGhost (many thanks for the tip, btw!) pointed out the story and that Virtual Surveys own Ray Poynter had commented on it, which is reproduced in its entirity below:

“First the declaration of interest, I am one of the Admins from the mylifemyid site and a director of Virtual Surveys, the company that ran and hosted mylifemyid.Secondly, a couple of quibbles. Surely, the use of the word “purportedly” is a tad tendentious. Over 50 million online ads were placed in locations such as Bebo and Facebook to promote the site, and over 1000 young people have indeed had their say. You are right to say many people dismissed the site as propaganda, but most of them said that before they saw the content. It is hard to describe a website which hosts so many anti-ID Card comments and Government propaganda.Finally, some information. The site reached its scheduled end on October 15, after three months of listening. The content of the site is now being analysed and a report will be presented to the Identity and Passport Service, who have committed to publishing the report on their website.”
(my emphasis added)
Now…I’m really not quite sure what to make of this statement. Has Ray just admitted that the site was a conduit for government propaganda? Is he claiming the site was somehow neutral or ‘evened out’ by the huge swathe of anti-ID comments that were left in response? This would be a significant revelation - meaning the site was a blatant government PR exercise all along, and that the admins were in fact biased and therefore the entire research flawed. I could speculate from now till Christmas, however, I feel Morel’sGhost summed it up pretty nicely:

“Ray Poynter can quibble all he likes but the Economist is spot on.mylifemyid was designed from the ground-up to present Labour’s ID plans in a positive and non-threatening light. The site’s moderators (including Ray) repeatedly posted specious and leading questions which, without exception, endorsed the Home Office’s arguments which (also without exception) were shot down, taken apart and ridiculed by participants. The site administrators quickly deleted any responses (in a supposedly open forum) critical of the study’s dubious research and ethical basis.mylifemyid’s “scheduled end” (i.e. deletion) was utterly inappropriate for an online consultation exercise which was publicly funded at a cost of £75,000. Study data should have been left online and in-situ for participants and interested parties to compare with the final report (which will anyway be utterly ignored by the Home Office - not even the most creative “researcher” could plausibly give a positive spin to the avalanche of negative comments triggered by the site).”…a website which hosts so many anti-ID Card comments AND Government propaganda.” You said it, Ray.”

EDIT: Ray Poynter responded here and on the Economist website regarding his earlier comment:

“Oops! What I meant (and what I thought I had typed) was “It is hard to describe a website which hosts so many anti-ID Card comments as Government propaganda.”

Very few comments were taken down from the site, and these were for abuse of the Ts&Cs, general abuse, or because they had been flagged by users as offensive. There were many posts that made comments about the site, its motivation, the way it was moderated, and except for the handful that fell foul of the abuse rule, they remained on the site.

I take Morel’s point about the case for not removing this type of project at the end of its period of action. We will certainly be recommending that future projects provide some sort of ongoing, public record of the discourse.

For example, I would be happy to debate whether the moderation was neutral or biased, but, without the material being available to all parties, I would be expecting people to simply take may word for it, and that would be unfair (and not necessarily likely to happen).

Ray Poynter, an Admin at mylifemyid”

Thanks for clearing that up Ray. I disagree with some of your points though - and I’ll be writing a post later on tonight to discuss this.

Posted in ID cards | 4 Comments »

21/10/2008 by deepspacemillar.

Ars Technica is a site I have great respect for. They have some of the most intelligent and detailed analysis of technology, science, business, and law on the web. So I was rather pleasantly surprised to find a great article on the erosion of privacy in the UK.
The article mentions how the RIPA laws that have come into effect over the last year have a provision which means you cannot withhold the encryption keys to encrypted data if the government asks for it as part of a criminal investigation. The penalty is 2 years imprisonment for ‘normal’ crime, and 5 years if the crime is linked to ‘terrorism’. The RIPA provisions also apparently trump the right to silence, meaning that you cannot choose to say nothing/provide no evidence.
As always though, the legislation is potentially useless against well organised criminals - who can use freely available programs to encrypt data, but with two (or more) different encryption keys. Each key can be made to unlock a different set of data, meaning that say, one key could open perfectly innocent data, and one could be encrypting your terrorism manuals and anti-ID card poster designs. The interesting element in such an approach is this: given the ‘innocent’ key, an outsider would only see the innocent data, and would have absolutely no knowledge of any other sets of data present, therefore being completely unaware of anything incriminating. Therefore, as mentioned, anyone who has their wits about them can circumvent the law as before.

The article goes on to mention the IMP database, the implications, and the backlash against it. It also mentions the new rules on purchasing mobile phones with ID, again nothing how serious criminals can easily avoid such measures. My favourite paragraph is this:
“Just as there are data encryption systems that can defeat RIPA, there are communication systems that defeat the proposed database, and which do so before the legislation has even been passed to create the database in the first place. This is truly pointless legislation that will make us no safer.”

The conclusion is equally scathing on the other points. Well worth a read.

Posted in ID cards | 1 Comment »

21/10/2008 by deepspacemillar.

According to the Sunday Times, Jacqui Smith is facing a rebellion from senior Home Office officials over the plans for the IMP database. A leaked memo showed that said officials opposed on the grounds that the database would be “impractical, disproportionate, politically unattractive and possibly unlawful from a human rights perspective”. The backlash has potentially caused the IMP proposals to be dropped from the Queen’s speech, and may now be reviewed by the Home Office. The Home Office refused to comment on the matter, but alternative proposals are apparently on the sidelines, including one where requests for information are sent automatically to the existing providers/database holders.

The story is here.

Posted in ID cards | 1 Comment »

20/10/2008 by deepspacemillar.

I have a number of interesting stories I’ve come across recently that don’t neccessarily warrant individual posts, so here’s a few of the more interesting ones, summarised for your perusal:

Home Office trying to persuade unions to drop opposition to ID cards
Warning: this one has a close-up picture of Jacqui Smith holding an ID card, if you’re squeamish, look away now
The Home Office is apparently trying to persuade the trade unions to change their minds on ID cards by trumpeting how ID cards will ‘reduce costs’ and ’save time’ processing workers for airport jobs. Of course, the Home Office neglects to mention that airport jobs are so strict because they made it that way. But I digress. Meg Hillier, the goon in charge of ID cards, claims some trade unions see the benefits of the scheme and that “Not all trade unions think that the position (anti-ID) is one that should remain,”. The story also has a few other interesting paragraphs…
“The first ID cards, for foreign nationals, will be introduced next month followed by those for airport workers in 2009. Young people will be targeted in 2010 and from 2012 everyone applying for a passport will be put on the national identity register.

ID cards, which carry the users’ fingerprints, will be valid travel documents with the EU and ministers hope that young people will see them as a cheap alternative - at £30 - to purchasing a £72 passport.”

The article also mentions the use of facial recognition systems when fingerprints are not reliable, and that the ID card scheme is ‘largely self financing’ and that no savings would be gained by scrapping it… Right…

Biometrics alone is not enough to prevent fraud
This article discusses some of the weaknesses in the biometrics used in the ID card system. Fairly short, but it has some interesting points on the security aspect of the ID cards.

ID card staff lose security passes
Continuing with security, the Guardian reports on how staff at both the Home Office and Ministry of Justice have managed to lose 3,492 security passes since 2001 (a rate of more than one a day). These offices are responsible for managing the ID card systems and NIR. This raises the question - if the physical security at these departments is so lax that security passes are leaking out like water through a seive, how can they be trusted to secure a database of such importance as the NIR, or indeed, the IMP database? Absolutely shocking.

Free Agent
The Guardian also has an interesting interview with the former head of MI5, Stella Rimington. In it, she describes how she believes the secret services have been widely politicised, her opposition to ID cards, 42-day detention and government inanity. An interesting interview.

High up with Jacqui Smith at the IPPR
An analysis on Jacqui Smith’s speech on the IMP database plans. From this, it sounds like her speech was as inane as I would have expected. The final paragraph, noting an exchange between the BBC’s security correspondant and Jacqui Smith over Lord West’s recent remarks about “another great plot building up again” is particularly interesting, I would have loved to hear that!

UK.gov plans ‘consensus’ on PAYG phone registry
So, you’ve got a database that records all the phone calls made in the entire country, and data linking nearly all of those calls to people by ID card. But wait! Some people are using Pay-As-You-Go phones, and you don’t know who they are! They could be terrorists! So what do you do about it? Simple - make it law for people to provide ID when purchasing a phone, and record their details and the number. You don’t want any missing entries on the database after all.
Another fine example of how ‘voluntary’ ID cards will be rather important in future, and how the nanny state will keep tabs on you, just to stop you hurting yourself…

UK.gov says: Regulate the internet
El Reg explains how the government wants to regulate the Internet. Yes, finally the government can protect us from the horrors of the web, and provide us with nice, clean, sanitised content from trusted sources, friends, and people with sufficently deep pockets. The article refers to comments made by head of Ofcom, Lord David Currie. I just wonder though, have these people ever used the internet? I mean, really, do they actually understand just how massive it actually is? Clearly not…

Posted in ID cards | 1 Comment »

20/10/2008 by deepspacemillar.

According to an article in the Inquirer, the government will be testing the NIR using criminal fingerprints supplied by the FBI.
The FBI is providing millions of records from their own systems for testing containing both flat fingerprints and rolled fingerprints. This is strange however, because rolled fingerprints are only used in criminal systems, where their better accuracy is needed in courts, etc. By its definition, the NIR doesn’t use rolled fingerprints, it uses flats, so it’s naturally quite strange to find the IPS has procured millions of full sets of rolled fingerprints.
The Inquirer submitted a FoI request earlier this year, asking the terms of the agreement with the FBI. They were been told that the information could not be released because some of it was sensitive, and also because it was sent by the FBI ‘in confidence’ and public disclosure would apparently be in-appropriate…
The obvious question is, why is the government using criminal type fingerprints to test the NIR? And why are they not forthcoming with an explanation?
I think this needs an explanation…

Posted in ID cards | 1 Comment »