Database state breached 11 times Home Secretary Alan Johnson has given Parliament some details on the most recent breaches of the various identity databases held by his ministry. Johnson told the House of Commons that there were 11 occasions in the last year when information was used or accessed improperly. In response to a question from Chris Grayling, Tory …
More like 200,000 times, just because the majority of the misuses are not caught.
There is no mechanism for people to be informed that their data is being used, in order to report MISuse of it. Hence the number 11 just represents some small number Alan Johnson wishes the number was.
> Letting someone else use their log-in details?
> That's the FIRST thing everyone learns NOT to do when they learn about computers.
If only ... my son's secondary school was brand new a couple of years ago and one of the "new" things they announced they'd have a card payment system at the canteen and this would be linked to the school website so parents could check what they kids were eating and see when the card needed a top up ... however implementation details were sorted out (and other features like online topup disappeared) it was revealed this info was linked to the students accounts and parents couldn't have an independent login .... no problem said the school - just ask your son/daughter to tell you their password!
Meanwhile for us a simple "what did you have for lunch"/"tuna baguette" (or very very occassionally "what did you have for lunch"/"cheese baguette") exchange seems to work
Well that's just great but I'm sure you'll agree the standards for a national identity database should probably be a tiny bit higher than those necessary to run a school canteen.
"my secondary school kid gets away with it" isn't really a good standard by which to judge our politicians. Ditto "my coworkers get away with it" Just because you work with idiots doesn't mean we should let idiots have access to personal data on everyone in the country.
"He said it was UK Border Agency policy not to provide any further breakdown or details"
What a fucking typically political thing to say; as much as I think the other parties will screw us over as well, I sure as hell want these self-serving, pathetic, fascist, CCTV-but-photographer-hating-wankers out of parliament and onto the dole queue a.s.a.p.
So, back to the quote, if the government need some data, one of their own departments can basically say "sod off, our ball, we ain't gonna play"?
TOSSERS.
How can people say things like
"Johnson told the House of Commons that there were 11 occasions in the last year when information was used or accessed improperly."
with a streight face? Did he even give a slight hint that that is simply the number of occasions where people were caught? What do we think their detection rate is? 0.1%?
kiddie logs in with official id, pervert uses backchannel to check kiddie is kiddie not cop. Shouldn't the government be educating people *not* to give away their ID info on the 'net, rather than thinking of ways to force them to reveal their real ID's?
Plus as AC #1 says, if the government were serious about ID related problems, making it mandatory for data holders to notify data subjects of the data held, and when it was accessed would be so much better for the public.
... as the idea Jacqui Smits had, that sex offenders should register their email addresses with Facebook, et al ...
If Ms Hilliers media minders aren't throwing themselves in front of self-aimed blunders like this, then I can only presume they have already worked out where the chips will fall, come May 7th.
Computer security in the hand of bureaucracy - private or public - can NEVER be anything but a joke ... it's the way these clones are wired. 'Secure' information on screens facing the public. Logins stuck to the bottom of drawers (cunning or what). Even stickit notes on the side of monitors with logins. Passwords not just passed around, but sometimes over open phone lines too. I once got into a 'secure' library system with the password ... wait for it ... "books" !!
I've seen the lot - it's a joke. The people at the top don't care, and don't know enough to do much if they did care. All they ever require from a system is deniability.
To be fair to Frau Hitler[1] et al, there's nowhere left for them to go. Even though they're staring into the abyss, the only thing they can do is jump in.
What would happen if a massive attack of common sense hit Westminster and they decided to scrap the ID cards? They would be seen as (a) untrustworthy, (b) simply grubbing after votes in a last-ditch attempt to cling on to power and (c) having wasted an enormous amount of public money and achieved absolutely nothing. I daresay there would be some whining from over the Atlantic about going soft on terrorists as well.
At least by sticking to their line that ID cards will keep us all safe from harm, eradicate terrorists overnight, flush out all the illegals and drop them in weighted sacks off the White Cliffs of Dover, reverse global warming and cure cancer, they can be Seen To Be Doing Something, even if will be as effective as pissing on a forest fire.
This is what happens when people don't pay attention to the politicians they're handing power to, and instead vote Conservative because of all the illegal immigrants, or Labour because of wot Thatcher did or just sit on their lazy arses because they insist on their democratic right to do so. The bar's now so low that any bunch of second-rate shit-sorry losers can gain the power of life or death over us provided they look good on TV and can spout meaningless drivel without stumbling. And that's what we've had for the last 13 years.
[1] Yeah, yeah, I know, Godwin's Law. So bloody what.
So FaceBook will have access to verify the ID card. That's good, because they have such a great record with privacy and security. And of course, all PCs will have card readers so we can't just use someone else's card details when logging in.
Oh well - at least this will end the curse of anonymnity on the internet, so that people can't log into popular websites using pseudonyms, and call all government ministers a bunch of fucking ass-hats.
Like wot I just did.
"So FaceBook will have access to verify the ID card."
I wouldn't be at all surprised that commercial companies do eventually end up getting access of some sort to the database. Lets face it, this is the party that brought you PFI.
They just don't get it, I'm not sure if it is a generational thing or if the sorts of people in parliament really are this retarded when it comes to computers, but this sort of blatant stupidity is dangerous when married up to real power.
I wonder, do these people ever wonder how terrorists are created?
From a terrorist point of view they are fighting oppression*.
Therefore when we are all being subjected to the oppression of having our lives determined by the validity of a database they will be creating a new generation of terrorists.
Is that right? They want more terrorists? Or are they just bored with the foreign ones and have decided to make some 'in-house' so to speak?
Catch 'em while they're young and condition them that social interaction requires Government authentication...
This Government's "respect" for privacy long ago ceased to be anything other than a VERY, VERY sick joke.
Last time a labour canvasser came round to ask whether she could count on my support, I asked her in all seriousness, whether her candidate was indeed the last man on earth.
Sadly, she didn't get it.
Not, mind, that the Tories look any better, when you look past the PR frontage.
Maybe most of the adults who pose as children online for the purpose of sexual abuse actually have mutually satisfactory encounters in the end and nobody really gets hurt, and we only hear about the few cases that don't go so well so that the child is lured hundreds of miles from home and raped and murdered. But I still don't approve of it. I don't approve of (other forms of) online bullying either. Will a user's identity camd scheme reduce cases of that? I think it could and I think it's worth considering.
That Alan Johnson believes (or rather, purports to) that there were only '11 occasions in the last year when information was used or accessed improperly' - or the fact that the Home Office is so crap they only identified 11 cases. And they wonder why we aren't sold on the ID database.
When will they realise that the greatest danger isn't that it will be hacked - the greatest danger is that they will believe that it can never be hacked and base their decisions/policies/laws on the basis of that misconception.
The technical reason that all kids couldn't be issued cards is simple. Nobody could afford the umpty trillion currency running cost of such a system, this is IT after all.
Then there would be the loss of cards, the misuse of them, the fact that cards proving you are a kid are a paedophiles dream, the outrage from well you know, outraged people.
I personally don't think we should be encouraging a card carrying children state.
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