Shadow state? Scotland's IT independence creeps forth As debate kicks off at Westminster over the surveillance powers of spies and the police, the 55 Scottish National Party lawmakers look likely to be a restraining influence. The party’s general election manifesto pledged to oppose the Snooper’s Charter. A decade ago, SNP MPs were among the first to oppose New Labour’s identity …
Well, the Scottish citizens have the opportunity to vote in the Scottish Parliamentary election next May.
Given that the SNP government seems to consist of fairly canny operators, I would expect that anything that looks like a vote-loser will have disappeared well before the election. And if it's not a vote-loser, then - given that there is a free and open democratic system in Scotland - then good luck to them, even if we would disagree.
Obviously.
The SNP is like the Lib Dems. When they are in opposition they get popular because they back every protest group and oppose every unpopular decision.
Personally, I would delegate authority for everything north of the border to the lawfully elected government there and stand back and watch the fireworks. As soon as they start having to break solemnly made promises (that can't be kept if you actually have to make the books balance) then their popularity is going to go down like the Titanic.
I'd point out three things:
The SNP are not an opposition party: they've been in government for eight years, including being re-elected with a greater share of the vote.
The Scottish Government has always balanced its books - it must, because it does not have borrowing powers (although the previous Scotland Act is about to introduce some, and who knows what we'll get along with road signs in the current Scotland Bill).
Unlike most governments, the SNP's popularity in polls has consistently increased since they took power, although the extent to which this is due to their competence, as opposed to them just being less incompetent than anyone else (witness Scottish Labour's implosion at the last Westminster election), could be debated.
Harmonisation with continental practice. The majority of EU member states have ID cards. We're nearly unique in not having them. It's no surprise that every party that gets a whiff of power supports it - they're taking the advice of their civil servants, and the civil service in turn is following the EU principle of voluntary harmonisation that usually precedes the commencement of discussions for a directive setting a common policy. It's a long and drawn-out process.
"he majority of EU member states have ID cards"-- AC
I don't have a problem with ID cards per se although I have a problem with an obligation to (a) carry one at all times or (b) show it to any little petty official who asks. The problem is with the surveillance machinery that seems to be part and parcel of it: "oh, if we're going to have ID cards, why don't we have a massive frickin' database and track everybody all the time"
As in so many cases it's not the ideas that are the problem, it's the scope creep.
"I don't have a problem with ID cards per se although I have a problem with an obligation to (a) carry one at all times or (b) show it to any little petty official who asks."
I already have a passport that satisfies all of those requirements. An ID card system is duplication. A requirement to *have* a passport, so that you appear on the database, is (as you say) scope creep.
An ID card and a passport are different things.
An ID card is proof of identity as an individual within a state or organisation. A passport is an internationally standardised proof of identity and citizenship between states.
I have no problem with ID cards if they are used as a proof of identity for access to government services. For example the Estonian state uses a card with two factor backup that identifies holders to a middleware service that provides proven identity data to the other services - driver licencing, voting, utility billing, banking etc. The card number itself isn't necessarily recorded in those foreign databases, only in the identity system.
Where I do have a problem is where they try and make the card itself hold all the specifics of a person - addresses for example, so if you move you have to get a new card *cough* UK driver licence. I also strongly disagree with the idea of smushing all the data together into a wonderful all seeing database, because I don't trust the people running it not to look at the data when they shouldn't. Multiple independant databases linked by middleware with tightly defined access protocols are inherently safer from both attack and malicious snooping.
"Harmonisation with continental practice. The majority of EU member states have ID cards."
That may explain that side of it, but not the BB style camera upgrade and other nonsense.
Sheesh, I had high hopes for scotland, I figured if things got too facist in the south we could all do a 'Monty Python Sci-Fi sketch thing and follow a raised fist north to the twirling of bagpipes (for those who have not seen or can't recall).
Simple - in the case of CCTV - many do not work now and need to be replaced. You're hardly going to waste money replacing them only to find they are incompatible with police control rooms.
And the Scottish Government does not have the intention of bringing in any sort of ID card scheme. This constantly seems to get exaggerated into something Orwelian when the intent is to rationalise different numbering systems across health care systems.
As for the Named Person Scheme (whose intent is to pick up on signs of abuse earlier rather than later) - those leading the campaign against it are not Civil Libertarians - they are the usual cluster fuck of anti-vaxers, home schoolers and right wing christian fundamentalist wingnuts.
"As for the Named Person Scheme (whose intent is to pick up on signs of abuse earlier rather than later) - those leading the campaign against it are not Civil Libertarians - they are the usual cluster fuck of anti-vaxers, home schoolers and right wing christian fundamentalist wingnuts."
I am not a leader of No2NP, but I am definitely against the named person scheme. However, I am not an anti-vaxer, or any flavour of Christian (or other sky-fairy-tale). I am very much in favour of home-schooling, though (if I had children, they would be home-schooled). You misrepresent the named person scheme as being about "picking up on child abuse", but it depends what the State thinks child abuse is. The published materials state that a child not having a say about what is on the TV and how their bedroom is decorated, along with not being able to ride a bike by the age of [5 or 7 - can't quite remember] is one about whom concern should be raised. This is far beyond the paedoterror justification you imply (and which is hugely exaggerated anyway).
For a start, given that a recurring outcome of inquiries after each sadder-than-sad abuse/neglect cases is "individuals in separate departments/organisations didn't join the dots or share the information" then the notion that for each Wee Jimmy or Jeanie, someone identifiable has "your buck stops with me" on their desk, seems arguably sensible. And it needn't *necessarily* involve untoward layers of bureaucracy or intrusive data-gathering.
I can see similar potential sense in each of the other topics mentioned. I can also appreciate the risks highighted in the article. So, I am going to find out more - with an open mind.
Thank you.
" the Named Person scheme, allocating a state-sector professional to every under-18 in Scotland. The scheme, which is already operating in some areas and will cover all of Scotland by August 2016, provides someone who can respond to requests for help from a child
Does anyone actually think that this is really necessary? Does anyone think that this will achieve anything of value?
"Does anyone actually think that this is really necessary? Does anyone think that this will achieve anything of value?"
Short answer; no.
An older article on the subject:
http://www.scottishreview.net/MaggieMellon137.shtml
"More children are in poverty, homeless and hungry. We have not 'got it right' at all. But, rather than focus on tackling the really big obstacles to children's welfare, the focus somehow seems to have shifted to monitoring and intervening in the lives of all children. Put simply, the state seems to be fancying itself as better at parenting than families. In reality the state makes a lousy parent, taking children into care, moving them around, and throwing them out to fend for themselves at 16 or 17 years."
And further articles describing how things don't always go very well this side of the border:
http://scottishreview.net/KennethRoy8a.html
and
http://scottishreview.net/KennethRoy10a.html
"The distressed little boys in Edinburgh were the victims of a system which was unable to cope, poorly led, and in which morale had hit rock bottom. Only an unjust decision by an Edinburgh sheriff – and all that followed it – brought their case to light. And so we are left to wonder: how many other victims were there in the summer of 2013 whose cases never came to light? And how many have there been since, as Children's Hearings Scotland has struggled to sort out its disorganised affairs? We shall never know."
I have no idea if it is necessary or worthwhile and haven't looked into the details of the proposals but, on the face of it, it doesn't sound too different to holding 'next of kin' details.
While accepting there are concerns over what data is stored, who can access it, and the risks involved in having such a list stolen or inappropriately accessed, I fear we are frequently becoming too over-concerned with those risks. It seems it is becoming fashionable to have a knee-jerk reaction against any storage of 'personal data' rather than a sincere analysis of threat, risk and benefits.
Perhaps that is because of perceived eagerness for data grabs, difficulty to opt-out, opt-in as the default, and hidden agendas, and we do indeed need to assess proposals, but sometimes good ideas are simply that.
This seems to have features resembling Deloite's RYOGENS scheme, which was briefly popular with the Blair, Blunkett and Straw version of hang'em and flog'em until an increasing number of parents began to recognise what it would entail.
http://databasemasterclass.blogspot.co.uk/2006/08/6-ryogens.html
"£10m upgrade of Scotland’s network of 2,800 public CCTV [cameras]"
£3,571 *per f@%kin' camera* !!! To achieve exactly what?
The only time I remember these been used was to move on the street-walking girls near the city centre in Glasgow back in the 90's - and guess what? They moved one street over.
Surely it'd be cheaper to simply have a police dog handler take poochie for walkies that way whenever puppy needed a shite.
£3,571 *per f@%kin' camera* !!!
Is about right, given that a lot are analogue so you are talking networking, HDD recorders, etc, and labour to visit each camera point and do the work, possibly with a cherry-picker.
To achieve exactly what?
Aye, there is the rub. Just how helpful are these cameras? Have we got evidence that they will save more than £10m in reduced crime?
I was a bit shocked 20 years ago walking through Livingston police station, they had a wall of screens of live feeds from all over the town. You kind of expect that in a city-centre especially now, but I hadn't ever spotted a single camera in that small town.
The top cop there had a chat with me about them trying to bribe a student activist to spy on their student politics, the student of course exposed them in the media, and the cops attitude was telling, "If we can do it we will do it". No regard for morality or legality, just give them a tool and they'll use it to beat you with.
A very decent young man emerged from their training and complained to me bitterly about human rights legislation stopping him doing his job. And expected my sympathy.
The poor quality of CCTV systems amazes me. We all carry around mobile phones that can do far better and a few minutes of web research will confirm that the actual sensors are cheap as chips. It must therefore be obvious that the high cost of a CCTV system is the physical deployment and wiring, possibly the optics, and definitely not the sensor.
So how the hell to CCTV salesdroids get away with the fuzzy, SD, monochrome imagery that we see in crime reports?
Because people record a few seconds of video on their iPhones and think I takes a while to post to facebook while businesses record a rolling couple of weeks worth from 2 or 3, or more cameras.
Or they bought the kit a couple of years ago because the insurance company til them they had to have it.
Plenty of dead and dying homeless in Edinburgh - 366 registered last time I put in a FoI request, a tiny subsection of the several thousand unregistered homeless. And even the registered ones can wait for over five years in a city full of empty houses.
And yet we get George effing Clooney waltzing in to support a homelessexploitation posh cafe, and all the darlings are out to fawn. As bad as the Sally Anne. We've yet to choose a national anthem, but 'The Preacher and the Slave' should be the only choice.
I helped get some of the SNP elected and I'm regretting that now, they are just as bad as the scum they replaced. (Also I'm the guy who told them their ccTLD could and should be .Scot rather than their proposed .Sco, effin' muppets)
Police Scotland are psychopathic, even by my low standards. They were never nice overall though generally you could find a decent cop if you searched them out, but since the force merger they are all just box-ticking, corrupt, sadistic morons. So are our sheriffs and all our politicians. The local gangsters are more reasonable and sensible. Instead of just complaining, I have a positive suggestion:
We impose psychological testing on pilots, so why don't we do that with police, judiciary, civil servants and teachers? A crazy pilot can only kill you for a short time, relatively low risk compared to the damage our 'public servants' spread.
Just like all other politicians. They'll say what needs to be said to get themselves elected and those promises get fucked out the window when they get voted in. Independent or part of the Union, it doesn't matter. You're fucked either way (as are the rest of us)
I think they start off good but power corrupts them, like wealth turns people mean. Hardly a plot spoiler, I know, somebody just crucify me now. The rigged Monopoly game in the link is interesting, as my single-parent sister did the opposite. I caught my nephew and niece playing Monopoly and both were in debt, so I asked how they could both be losing. My sis hadn't taught them to take money at the start of the game "to make it more realistic". Bitter woman, now a DWP manager of course but her kids turned out okay.
The SNP is generally only preferable to the Westminster parties because of how truly awful London politicians are. The party itself is extremely opaque (Alex Salmond in particular has an abysmal record on FOI requests), has a strong tendency to make a lot of left-wing statements but still follow standard free market doctrine for 90% of the economy, and it's internal politics are very antidemocratic - for example, Alex Salmond's hurried re-emergence in 2000ish when it was clear that Nicola Sturgeon couldn't win the leadership contest alone.
Many of the things Nicola Sturgeon was attacking the Westminster crew for back in May were things that her own government was doing independently in Scotland, and I wouldn't be hugely surprised if there's a big swing in Labour's direction over the next few years; the Scots like socialism, and while the SNP talk about it a lot they don't actually seem that keen on practicing it outside of a few headline-grabbers (free Uni tuition, mostly).
With the SNP in Power the country will by 2025 get their desire for independence and proceed to form the SSSP.
Scottish Soviet Socialist Paradise.
Even my ex In-Laws are thinking of migrating South and they are native to Old Reekie.
It is doomed I tell ye, doomed.
{and we'll have to pick up the bill as usual}
This part of the U.K. is going to the dugs!
The thing is, despite all the interference in their daily lives and their horrid experiments in centralisation, their little sheep will still vote for them.
I recently noticed my CHI number on a document totally unrelated to healthcare from a public body. At least the UK ID card scheme was public and voluntary, this snooping is covert and suspect.
Peter Dow is a Scottish scientist and a republican socialist whose legal human rights are cruelly violated by the police and courts in Aberdeen, where he lives.
Peter Dow's political defence blog publishes the truth about the wrongful and unjust royalist arrests, prosecutions, convictions and punishments he endures.
http://peter-dow.blogspot.co.uk/
My scientific opinion is that it was stupidity and ignorance on the part of police detectives, prosecutors and sheriffs who read my tweets and quoted them as their poor excuse -
to seek a sheriff's warrant to incite police officers to force entry to my home, search it and take my property
to break my front door down, as the police did, on 27th July 2014
to arrest me, to charge me and to hold me in a police cell overnight,
to ransack my flat from top to bottom, damaging my property in the process,
to seize my computer and my memory devices holding my irreplaceable science research and development data
to refuse to return my property even when it is not needed as "evidence" to "prove" anything because I admit the @peterdow tweets were mine
to impose in Aberdeen Sheriff Court oppressive bail conditions requiring me not to access the website of scot.tk or social media, with the threat that bail would be withdrawn and I would be imprisoned until trial - and that's a real threat of police and prison officer violence against me
to terrorize me from posting about my political views on social media, which at that time would have been increasingly about the campaign for the Scottish independence referendum, supporting a "YES" vote
to trump up a criminal charge in respect of my social media posts
to proceed to a unfair trial in Aberdeen Sheriff Court initially due on 4th of November (now the trial date has been moved to 23rd February 2016)
I frankly and openly admit to owning the @peterdow Twitter account and I've offered to delete any of the complained-about tweets which the police or prosecutors would otherwise take action over because no tweet is worth the loss of liberty and property which the police and prosecutors have terrorized me with.
rationalwiki?
Who says it's rational beyond an Anon Cow?
Please, do me, do me! I guess I could contribute myself myself, it being a 'wiki' after all. Why ask you?
Registrant Contact Information:
Name: Trent Toulouse
Organization: RationalWiki
City: Hamilton
State: Ontario
Zip: L8S2E4
Country: CA
Phone: +1.5052502814
Post by Doctor Trent Toulouse.
"A few weeks will mark another milestone for the site, 6 years! I had just started my graduate school program up in Canada. I was drawn to Conservapedia ...."
Yeah, stopped reading there. Too Mad; Didn't Read. My dear 'doctor' (not a real doctor as far as I've found) didn't bother hiding his own Whois address from his smearing website. I blame his parents, I'd be mad too with a name like that, very reminiscent of the smelly cat-rapist Pepé Le Pew.
ARRSE is great for exposing Walter Mitty's posing as SAS heroes, no question. It's not really an arbitrator of anything else though, and whoever there quoted Dr Pepe Le Pew as a source was probably Mrs Le Pew.
I'm not defending the original poster, just saying the person abusing him, Trent Whoever, has no credibility.
What is it with people and ID cards???
How many of these dissenters carry a Driving License? Ooh let's have a look at that will we:
1) Your Name
2) Your Address
3) Your Date of Birth
4) Your Photo
5) Your frickin signature!!
6) It's accepted in Euro-land
The new Chipped cards the DVLA are proposing will have even MORE data about you contained on them.
If the Government wants a National ID card scheme, just introduce a base DVLA card for everyone - it doesn't matter if they bother to learn to Drive - bingo: National ID Problem solved.
No additional billions in system development required, no think tanks, no working groups, job done.
"If the Government wants a National ID card scheme"...then "I don't want to be joined to another object by an inclined plane wrapped helically around an axis" (BBT)
Remember John Swinney was the uber-lawyer who justified rewarding the Scottish Census contract to the Abu Ghraib torturers, "We would never award any contract to *convicted* criminals", whilst simultaneously squashing a prosecution of CACI in the Scottish courts.
I did prisoner-support for a while, and I wrote to Angela Constance about a prisoner being abused by the SPSin her constituency, and her reply was curt and daft, "I support the victims of crime not the criminals". Aye, when the victims of crime are themselves victims of criminal abuse by your state then you prioritise the possible tabloid headlines over actual justice.
There are some good people left in the SNP, but very few in the Scottish Government, and a diminishing amount. 'Slightly Better than Cameron and Blair' is a sad, sad slogan. Bought and sold for English gold, US dollars, Chinese Yuan...
And this result happened in a proportional electoral system imposed on the Scottish Parliament by London, one chosen to ensure that no one party could gain overall control.
By contrast, in Westminster:
With a 36.9% share of the vote, the Tories have 50.7% seats in the Commons (331/650 seats) with a Working majority of 17.
The 820 Lords, of course, aren't concerned by such trivial detail as having to be elected. Once hand-picked into that chamber, they aren't accountable to anyone.
With stats like these, is the London parliament really such a shining example of democracy?
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
