Walking down then up - Does it count?

Paul Rooney <[email hidden]> writes

Quoted message said:

On Sat, 10 Sep 2005 10:04:02 +0100, Gordon <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

Paul Rooney <[email hidden]> writes

Quoted message said:

You're very naive!

How so?

A(nother) major step towards a totalitarian 'socialist' state?

Quoted message said:

They heavies don't say: "We know where you live" nowadays,
they say "We have your postcode".

Mine's not static at the moment (-:

Damned earthquakes!
--
Gordon Harris

On Sat, 10 Sep 2005 18:39:56 +0100, Gordon <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

Paul Rooney <[email hidden]> writes

Quoted message said:

On Sat, 10 Sep 2005 10:04:02 +0100, Gordon <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

Paul Rooney <[email hidden]> writes
>
>You're very naive!

How so?

A(nother) major step towards a totalitarian 'socialist' state?

Quoted message said:

They heavies don't say: "We know where you live" nowadays,
they say "We have your postcode".

Mine's not static at the moment (-:

Damned earthquakes!

That's what she said to me last night.
--
R
o
o
n
e
y

"I always knew the entire Green party were nutters" - Ken Livingstone

Paul Rooney <[email hidden]> writes

Quoted message said:

On Sat, 10 Sep 2005 18:39:56 +0100, Gordon <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

Paul Rooney <[email hidden]> writes

Quoted message said:

On Sat, 10 Sep 2005 10:04:02 +0100, Gordon <[email hidden]>
wrote:

>Paul Rooney <[email hidden]> writes
>>
>>You're very naive!
>
>How so?

A(nother) major step towards a totalitarian 'socialist' state?
>
>They heavies don't say: "We know where you live" nowadays,
>they say "We have your postcode".

Mine's not static at the moment (-:

Damned earthquakes!

That's what she said to me last night.

Grabbing again?
--
Gordon Harris

On Sat, 10 Sep 2005 23:25:55 +0100, Gordon <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

Paul Rooney <[email hidden]> writes

Quoted message said:

On Sat, 10 Sep 2005 18:39:56 +0100, Gordon <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

Paul Rooney <[email hidden]> writes
>On Sat, 10 Sep 2005 10:04:02 +0100, Gordon <[email hidden]>
>wrote:
>
>>Paul Rooney <[email hidden]> writes
>>>
>>>You're very naive!
>>
>>How so?
>
>A(nother) major step towards a totalitarian 'socialist' state?
>>
>>They heavies don't say: "We know where you live" nowadays,
>>they say "We have your postcode".
>
>Mine's not static at the moment (-:

Damned earthquakes!

That's what she said to me last night.

Grabbing again?

(-:
--
R
o
o
n
e
y

"I always knew the entire Green party were nutters" - Ken Livingstone

In message <[email hidden]>
"Graham Seed" <[email hidden]> wrote:

[snip]

Quoted message said:

I see the bad people have got round chip and pin already. Why are they so
damn clever???

Graham

You mean 'chip and spin' don't you? Chip and pin is to protect the
banks not the customer. There are various laws governing use of
signatures that mean that it is up to a bank to prove that a signature
on a slip of paper is yours. In contrast no such protection exists for
pin numbers. If you have a phantom withdrawal from your bank account by
pin it is you the customer who has to prove it wasn't you.

see http://www.chipandspin.co.uk/ especially the article by Ross
Anderson et al

Anderson has been an expert witness in court cases where customers have
been trying to prove that money has been fraudulently removed from their
accounts using pin transactions.

--
o/ \\ // |\ ,_ o Mike Clark
<\__,\\ // __o | \ / /\, "A mountain climbing, cycling, skiing,
"> || _`\<,_ |__\ \> | immunology lecturer, antibody engineer and
` || (_)/ (_) | \corn computer user"

In message <[email hidden]>
"Graham Seed" <[email hidden]> wrote:

[snip]

Quoted message said:

I see the bad people have got round chip and pin already. Why are they so
damn clever???

Graham

You mean 'chip and spin' don't you? Chip and pin is to protect the
banks not the customer. There are various laws governing use of
signatures that mean that it is up to a bank to prove that a signature
on a slip of paper is yours. In contrast no such protection exists for
pin numbers. If you have a phantom withdrawal from your bank account by
pin it is you the customer who has to prove it wasn't you.

see http://www.chipandspin.co.uk/ especially the article by Ross
Anderson et al

Anderson has been an expert witness in court cases where customers have
been trying to prove that money has been fraudulently removed from their
accounts using pin transactions.

--
o/ \\ // |\ ,_ o Mike Clark
<\__,\\ // __o | \ / /\, "A mountain climbing, cycling, skiing,
"> || _`\<,_ |__\ \> | immunology lecturer, antibody engineer and
` || (_)/ (_) | \corn computer user"

In message <[email hidden]>

Dave Fawthrop said:

On Fri, 09 Sep 2005 19:33:19 GMT, [email hidden] (Peter)
wrote:

| On Wed, 07 Sep 2005 08:17:42 +0100, Simon Caldwell
| <[email hidden]> wrote:
|
| >Oppose ID cards and the database state - sign the pledge at
| >http://www.pledgebank.com/refuse
|
|
| Why???
|
| We're all already on several state databases... DVLA, birth and
| death register, National Health, Inland revenue, etc so why worry
| about another?

I *always* carry several means of identification when out of the house,
which anyone can see if they ask. Why should another make any difference?

At present there is no universal form of identification in the UK and
thus there is no single form of identification that you can be forced to
carry and to produce in order to prove your identity. Once you have such
a form of identity it will become the normal requirement and may
eventually become a legal requirement to carry and to produce. At that
point you become much more vulnerable to criminal misuse of the identity
card. If you loose your card, or it is stolen, or if it is
counterfeited, how do you prove that you are the rightful user of the
card and not the criminal? Identity theft is very prevalent as a crime
but at present it is not easy for criminals to harvest all your personal
information in a single attack. A single identity card with all
information linked together through that single card makes life much
easier for the sophisticated criminal.

--
o/ \\ // |\ ,_ o Mike Clark
<\__,\\ // __o | \ / /\, "A mountain climbing, cycling, skiing,
"> || _`\<,_ |__\ \> | immunology lecturer, antibody engineer and
` || (_)/ (_) | \corn computer user"

The message <[email hidden]>
from Mike Clark <[email hidden]> contains these words:

Quoted message said:

At present there is no universal form of identification in the UK and
thus there is no single form of identification that you can be forced to
carry and to produce in order to prove your identity. Once you have such
a form of identity it will become the normal requirement and may
eventually become a legal requirement to carry and to produce.

And one of these days genetic engineering may become so sophisticated
that pigs could grow wings and fly. About as likely IMO as voters
accepting mandatory carriage of identity cards outwith a war situation.
Remember the Poll Tax?

Quoted message said:

At that
point you become much more vulnerable to criminal misuse of the identity
card. If you loose your card, or it is stolen, or if it is
counterfeited, how do you prove that you are the rightful user of the
card and not the criminal?

How do you sucessfully counterfeit a card whose only essential elements
are those that link your person to a unique reference number?

Quoted message said:

Identity theft is very prevalent as a crime
but at present it is not easy for criminals to harvest all your personal
information in a single attack. A single identity card with all
information linked together through that single card makes life much
easier for the sophisticated criminal.

All the Government agencies already have extensive data bases each
covering the majority of the population. None of these agencies would
get much (if any) benefit from having some of that information stored on
your identity card. For domestic consumption the state really needs no
more than to know who you really are although for the holder there might
be some advantage in including personally useful information such as
blood group, insulin dpendency or donor card status. For foreign travel
1984 is already here, at least if you want to visit the (supposed) land
of the free.

--
Roger Chapman so far this year 53 summits
New - 27 (Marilyns 13, Nuttalls 5, Outlying Fells 10)
Repeats - 26 (Marilyns 10, Nuttalls 17, Wainwrights 12, Outlying Fells 0)

In a recent message <[email hidden]>,
Roger <[email hidden]> wrote.

[...]

Quoted message said:

And one of these days genetic engineering may become so sophisticated
that pigs could grow wings and fly. About as likely IMO as voters
accepting mandatory carriage of identity cards outwith a war situation.
Remember the Poll Tax?

[...]

What an extraordinary notion, that one day we will have to carry
identity cards. Believe me, the person who stops you will already have
your identity card in a little machine in his pocket. All he'll need
from you is your name and date of birth. It's the database that will be
important, not some damn silly bit of plastic.

Regards,
Nick.
--
Nick Hopton and Anne Hopton
Caversham, Reading, England
<[email hidden]>

Roger said:

How do you sucessfully counterfeit a card whose only essential elements
are those that link your person to a unique reference number?

You bribe the computer operators. As you already realise, the card
is irrelevant : it's the legislation allowing free sharing of data
between departments that's the problem.

So when the proposals are modified so that no-one has to carry or
pay for a card (just provide a DNA sample), everyone will be
happy, right ?

-adrian

The message <[email hidden]>
from Adrian Godwin <[email hidden]> contains these words:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

How do you successfully counterfeit a card whose only essential elements
are those that link your person to a unique reference number?

Quoted message said:

You bribe the computer operators. As you already realise, the card
is irrelevant : it's the legislation allowing free sharing of data
between departments that's the problem.

Exactly how many computer operators would you need to bribe to invent or
modify an identity that has its origins in details occurring many years
ago? And when you have invented another identity you are stuck with it.
It is absolutely no use unless the original identity is erased.

BTW AIUI Government departments are very restricted in what information
they can share. Why should identity cards change that situation?

Quoted message said:

So when the proposals are modified so that no-one has to carry or
pay for a card (just provide a DNA sample), everyone will be
happy, right ?

When all is said and done no one who is innocent should have cause to
worry. The real problem is that almost all of us are already criminals.
It is just that most of our crimes go undetected at present. You think I
am joking? I defy any motorist to be completely law abiding on any drive
in excess of a few miles. Then there is the other great leveller. Tax
fraud - from cash jobs with no vat for the jobbing builder via avoiding
Customs import duty to comfort funds for solicitors (cash payments to
commissioners of oaths) and many more.

--
Roger Chapman

The message <[email hidden]>
from Adrian Godwin <[email hidden]> contains these words:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

How do you successfully counterfeit a card whose only essential elements
are those that link your person to a unique reference number?

Quoted message said:

You bribe the computer operators. As you already realise, the card
is irrelevant : it's the legislation allowing free sharing of data
between departments that's the problem.

Exactly how many computer operators would you need to bribe to invent or
modify an identity that has its origins in details occurring many years
ago? And when you have invented another identity you are stuck with it.
It is absolutely no use unless the original identity is erased.

BTW AIUI Government departments are very restricted in what information
they can share. Why should identity cards change that situation?

Quoted message said:

So when the proposals are modified so that no-one has to carry or
pay for a card (just provide a DNA sample), everyone will be
happy, right ?

When all is said and done no one who is innocent should have cause to
worry. The real problem is that almost all of us are already criminals.
It is just that most of our crimes go undetected at present. You think I
am joking? I defy any motorist to be completely law abiding on any drive
in excess of a few miles. Then there is the other great leveller. Tax
fraud - from cash jobs with no vat for the jobbing builder via avoiding
Customs import duty to comfort funds for solicitors (cash payments to
commissioners of oaths) and many more.

--
Roger Chapman

In message <[email hidden]>

Roger said:

The message <[email hidden]>
from Mike Clark <[email hidden]> contains these words:

Quoted message said:

At present there is no universal form of identification in the UK
and thus there is no single form of identification that you can be
forced to carry and to produce in order to prove your identity. Once
you have such a form of identity it will become the normal
requirement and may eventually become a legal requirement to carry
and to produce.

And one of these days genetic engineering may become so sophisticated
that pigs could grow wings and fly. About as likely IMO as voters
accepting mandatory carriage of identity cards outwith a war
situation. Remember the Poll Tax?

Mandatory ID cards already exist in many countries, what makes you think
that they couldn't be introduced here? The stealth method envisaged by
our politicians is that they start off by claiming it will be a useful
card that is voluntary. After a while you realise that because the card
becomes the accepted norm of identification for so many goods and
services that you have to invariably capitulate and apply for one. Once
a certain majority percentage of the population then have them it
becomes a simple step to persuade that majority to force compulsion on
the rest.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

At that point you become much more vulnerable to criminal misuse of
the identity card. If you loose your card, or it is stolen, or if it
is counterfeited, how do you prove that you are the rightful user of
the card and not the criminal?

How do you sucessfully counterfeit a card whose only essential elements
are those that link your person to a unique reference number?

That response is just so naive. There isn't a technology based security
system in existence that can't fail either through giving rise to false
positives or false negatives. Such results can either be spontaneous
conditions or they can be contrived conditions. Criminals will take
advantage of such conditions, whilst most law abiding members of the
public will simply suffer the consequences of such conditions. For
example look at how common skimming and phishing has become for bank
cards. Criminals have gone to the trouble to build and install fake ATM
machines, or add-ons to bank ATM machines, that then intercept and
harvest the information of bank cards as they are used.

Whilst biometrics might make the job of counterfeiting slightly more
complex it certainly isn't foolproof as a system. For example biometric
fingerprint readers can be cheated with fake fingerprints, and iris
readers can be fooled with coloured contact lenses.

However you don't even need to go to those lengths, for example if you
were to fake a passport, would it be better to use somebody else's
photograph and then to try and disguise yourself to look similar, or
would it be better to insert your own photograph in place of the
original? Most criminals would choose to do the later. Thus if a
biometric identity card is used, one method of counterfeiting would be
to ensure that your faked card included your own biometric data so that
the card readers would accept it.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Identity theft is very prevalent as a crime but at present it is not
easy for criminals to harvest all your personal information in a
single attack. A single identity card with all information linked
together through that single card makes life much easier for the
sophisticated criminal.

All the Government agencies already have extensive data bases each
covering the majority of the population. None of these agencies would
get much (if any) benefit from having some of that information stored on
your identity card.

No they won't store the information on the card, the card will become
the means to connect to the information on a remote database. I said
'linked through that card' not 'held on that card'.

The major problem with identity theft is that the criminals are able to
steal money from your bank account and/or to run up huge amounts of
credit in your indentity before you realise it is happening. By the time
you do, the criminals have usually moved up to a new target and you then
have the difficulty of proving to the banks and credit agencies that it
wasn't you.

Quoted message said:

For domestic consumption the state really needs no more than to know
who you really are although for the holder there might be some
advantage in including personally useful information such as blood
group, insulin dpendency or donor card status. For foreign travel 1984
is already here, at least if you want to visit the (supposed) land of
the free.

Interestingly whilst you need a biometric passport to get into the USA
through official immigration channels, most US citizens don't have a
passport (because only a small percentage of them travel outside of
the USA) and they don't have compulsory ID for everyone and there are
as yet no proposals to introduce them.

--
o/ \\ // |\ ,_ o Mike Clark
<\__,\\ // __o | \ / /\, "A mountain climbing, cycling, skiing,
"> || _`\<,_ |__\ \> | immunology lecturer, antibody engineer and
` || (_)/ (_) | \corn computer user"

The message <[email hidden]>
from Mike Clark <[email hidden]> contains these words:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

At present there is no universal form of identification in the UK
and thus there is no single form of identification that you can be
forced to carry and to produce in order to prove your identity. Once
you have such a form of identity it will become the normal
requirement and may eventually become a legal requirement to carry
and to produce.

And one of these days genetic engineering may become so sophisticated
that pigs could grow wings and fly. About as likely IMO as voters
accepting mandatory carriage of identity cards outwith a war
situation. Remember the Poll Tax?

Quoted message said:

Mandatory ID cards already exist in many countries,

Probably most but name a few of the first world countries whose citizens
could expect to be punished if caught without their identity cards.

Quoted message said:

what makes you think
that they couldn't be introduced here?

You obviously don't remember the Poll Tax. :-)

Quoted message said:

The stealth method envisaged by
our politicians is that they start off by claiming it will be a useful
card that is voluntary. After a while you realise that because the card
becomes the accepted norm of identification for so many goods and
services that you have to invariably capitulate and apply for one. Once
a certain majority percentage of the population then have them it
becomes a simple step to persuade that majority to force compulsion on
the rest.

You seem to be incapable of appreciating the difference between having
an identity card and being forced to carry one. FWIW those of us without
passports or photos on our driving licences already have difficulty
proving our identity in some quarters.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

At that point you become much more vulnerable to criminal misuse of
the identity card. If you loose your card, or it is stolen, or if it
is counterfeited, how do you prove that you are the rightful user of
the card and not the criminal?

How do you successfully counterfeit a card whose only essential elements
are those that link your person to a unique reference number?

Quoted message said:

That response is just so naive. There isn't a technology based security
system in existence that can't fail either through giving rise to false
positives or false negatives. Such results can either be spontaneous
conditions or they can be contrived conditions. Criminals will take
advantage of such conditions, whilst most law abiding members of the
public will simply suffer the consequences of such conditions. For
example look at how common skimming and phishing has become for bank
cards. Criminals have gone to the trouble to build and install fake ATM
machines, or add-ons to bank ATM machines, that then intercept and
harvest the information of bank cards as they are used.

The above smoke screen has absolutely no relevance to the point under
discussion.

Quoted message said:

Whilst biometrics might make the job of counterfeiting slightly more
complex it certainly isn't foolproof as a system. For example biometric
fingerprint readers can be cheated with fake fingerprints, and iris
readers can be fooled with coloured contact lenses.

Why not go the whole hog and cut off/out the real thing? (As shown in
several recent and not so recent films) But that, like latex gloves, is
not likely to get past the human link in the chain and confusion though
coloured contact lenses would merely single out the perpetrator for
further investigation.

Quoted message said:

However you don't even need to go to those lengths, for example if you
were to fake a passport, would it be better to use somebody else's
photograph and then to try and disguise yourself to look similar, or
would it be better to insert your own photograph in place of the
original? Most criminals would choose to do the later. Thus if a
biometric identity card is used, one method of counterfeiting would be
to ensure that your faked card included your own biometric data so that
the card readers would accept it.

Hardly a successful counterfeit when the fraud reveals your true identity.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Identity theft is very prevalent as a crime but at present it is not
easy for criminals to harvest all your personal information in a
single attack. A single identity card with all information linked
together through that single card makes life much easier for the
sophisticated criminal.

All the Government agencies already have extensive data bases each
covering the majority of the population. None of these agencies would
get much (if any) benefit from having some of that information stored on
your identity card.

Quoted message said:

No they won't store the information on the card, the card will become
the means to connect to the information on a remote database. I said
'linked through that card' not 'held on that card'.

For whom? The doctor will only have medical information at his disposal,
the police only the police data base, etc. The Government, in their lack
of wisdom, might want to include other facts on the register but they
are not needed and they will soon find that restricting the register to
the essentials just might stop whichever one of Tonys Cronies to get the
contract from cocking it all up.

Quoted message said:

The major problem with identity theft is that the criminals are able to
steal money from your bank account and/or to run up huge amounts of
credit in your indentity before you realise it is happening. By the time
you do, the criminals have usually moved up to a new target and you then
have the difficulty of proving to the banks and credit agencies that it
wasn't you.

So what's new?

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

For domestic consumption the state really needs no more than to know
who you really are although for the holder there might be some
advantage in including personally useful information such as blood
group, insulin dependency or donor card status. For foreign travel 1984
is already here, at least if you want to visit the (supposed) land of
the free.

Quoted message said:

Interestingly whilst you need a biometric passport to get into the USA
through official immigration channels, most US citizens don't have a
passport (because only a small percentage of them travel outside of
the USA) and they don't have compulsory ID for everyone and there are
as yet no proposals to introduce them.

ISTR reading somewhere that they even have driving licences for non
drivers just so the occasional citizen without the usual string of
credit cards does have some way of interfacing with authority.

--
Roger Chapman so far this year 53 summits
New - 27 (Marilyns 13, Nuttalls 5, Outlying Fells 10)
Repeats - 26 (Marilyns 10, Nuttalls 17, Wainwrights 12, Outlying Fells 0)

Roger said:

Exactly how many computer operators would you need to bribe to invent or
modify an identity that has its origins in details occurring many years
ago? And when you have invented another identity you are stuck with it.
It is absolutely no use unless the original identity is erased.

One, probably. That's the advantage of putting all your eggs in one
basket : you can break tham all in one go. If changing your identity
required simultaneous matching changes to half a dozen separately-
administered databases then it becomes much more difficult.

Given the value to criminals of a fiddled ID (either changing your
own or stealing some elses) you can be sure organised crime will
put a huge effort into cracking the problem.

Quoted message said:

BTW AIUI Government departments are very restricted in what information
they can share. Why should identity cards change that situation?

They may or may not connect all existing databases up (medical ones
seem to be safe for now) but there s an intention to link at least
ID, employment records, criminal records and credit cards.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/13/id_access_database/

Quoted message said:

When all is said and done no one who is innocent should have cause to
worry. The real problem is that almost all of us are already criminals.
It is just that most of our crimes go undetected at present. You think I
am joking? I defy any motorist to be completely law abiding on any drive
in excess of a few miles. Then there is the other great leveller. Tax
fraud - from cash jobs with no vat for the jobbing builder via avoiding
Customs import duty to comfort funds for solicitors (cash payments to
commissioners of oaths) and many more.

Absolutely true. And the impossibility of keeping track of all these
trivial offences is a a major reason why they can't easily be used
by rogue individual officers or politically motivated factions to
harass you and me. So as you say, only the guilty have anything to
fear, but we're all guilty.

And then of course, there are those who are not (very) guilty but are
the victims of fraud, operator error and political whim. Just to bring
it back on topic, consider that hillwalking is a somewhat unregulated
activity practised by a generally rather individual set of people :
we don't like regulation except where it protects the environment we
enjoy. This might well bring us into conflict with government policy,
as it has done in the past.

I know u.r.w is fond of thread drift, but this really belongs in
uk.politics or somewhere. If you want to continue discussing it,
can we move it there please ?

-adrian

[email hidden] said...

Quoted message said:

Subject: Re: Walking down then up - Does it count?
From: Adrian Godwin <[email hidden]>
Newsgroups: uk.rec.walking

Adrian - I'm having trouble with email again... I got your letter -
thanks. You should have a package tomorrow hopefully.
--
To reply see 'from' in headers; lose the domain, and insert dots and @
where common sense dictates.

In message <[email hidden]>
Adrian Godwin <[email hidden]> wrote:

[snip]

Quoted message said:

Just to bring it back on topic, consider that hillwalking is a
somewhat unregulated activity practised by a generally rather
individual set of people : we don't like regulation except where it
protects the environment we enjoy. This might well bring us into
conflict with government policy, as it has done in the past.

For me that is where I came in to this thread, when some revealed that
they always carried identification and wouldn't object to carrying more.

If I drive a car then I can reasonably be asked to prove that I hold a
driving license. If I try to withdraw money from my bank account I can
reasonably be asked to verify my identity. However when I go out
walking, climbing or caving I frequently do not carry much or any
identification and I would oppose any attempt to impose such a duty.

--
o/ \\ // |\ ,_ o Mike Clark
<\__,\\ // __o | \ / /\, "A mountain climbing, cycling, skiing,
"> || _`\<,_ |__\ \> | immunology lecturer, antibody engineer and
` || (_)/ (_) | \corn computer user"

Fran said:

[email hidden] said...

Quoted message said:

Subject: Re: Walking down then up - Does it count?
From: Adrian Godwin <[email hidden]>
Newsgroups: uk.rec.walking

Adrian - I'm having trouble with email again... I got your letter -
thanks. You should have a package tomorrow hopefully.

I did, Fran. Thanks for your help.

-adrian

[email hidden] said...

Quoted message said:

Fran said:

[email hidden] said...

Quoted message said:

Subject: Re: Walking down then up - Does it count?
From: Adrian Godwin <[email hidden]>
Newsgroups: uk.rec.walking

Adrian - I'm having trouble with email again... I got your letter -
thanks. You should have a package tomorrow hopefully.

I did, Fran. Thanks for your help.

You're welcome :-)

--
To reply see 'from' in headers; lose the domain, and insert dots and @
where common sense dictates.