Posts by Simon

Furthermore, if we are going down this route

let's make the Highways Agency responsible for any crimes committed on any road as this is exactly the kind of philosophy the NSPCC and Barnardo's are trying to propound with their technically incompetent calls for filtering

there now cannot...

be any doubt that the "independent" speaker is actually part of the NuLabour collective. I mean why on earth should the cabinet have a discussion about what the speaker was going to announce in the commons, before it happened, if he is independent - surely this wouldn't matter to them until the statement had been made. This government is obviously out to create a neo communist state drawing from the worst excesses of the regimes in North Korea and the former USSR, not forgetting China and trying to use IT to get there. This is especially worrying because all the aforementioned states are, slowly but surely, modernising.

Something going wrong? I know, let's database it.

<quote>Victoria was not assessed, by those who saw her as a child with additional needs. It is questionable whether she would have appeared on a selective system of vulnerable children.</quote>

I think the last two sentences of the DCSF ContactPoint memo highlights an underlying truth that I’m certain they (DCSF) didn’t really mean to highlight.

Let’s re-write it a bit clearer

None of our staff know what they’re doing even when the reality of the situation smacks them around the face like a wet kipper. What we need is an all encompassing database so our staff can continue as they are without the stress of having to perform the jobs they are hired to do.

This is the typical NeoLabour stance; it’s not their fault and a database of everything will fix it. They skip out the fact that it was a _lack of action on data_, already in the system, which caused this travesty and not the lack of information itself.

If I remember correctly it was the amount of casework that was one of the more significant failings.

It’s all too easy to cherry pick the easy jobs and true professionalism that treats each case with equal gravitas. A database of everything will not fix this you bunch of twats.

Hahahahahaha

So there it is, oh mighty financial institutions of america - that's Numberwang.

Good article El Reg.

Surely...

the whole point of facebook is to allow those people, who feel the need to blab about everything, to blab about everything!

Not an ideal place to recruit some SIS operatives, I would guess.

If they do, at least we'll be able to forget about losses of data via the current, in vogue, methods.

ID cards are only the vehicle

Once everyone has been indexed NuLabour won't care who carries the cards - they'll have the database they're after. The majority of the interrogation centres are now already set up and operational.

The database of all UK citizens will be defeated but...

it no longer matters. These data leaks are just the way the government is getting around the issue. No doubt every time there is a leak announced someone in a trilby and reading a broadsheet (with 2 holes cut in it), standing on a corner somewhere in Westminster is collecting it. Surely this is why no minister is having to forfeit their job.

The one with the coat because that's the guy who is uploading the missing data to the government's everyone database.

Well written El Reg

A particularly good and in depth article on how the UK and US administrations collude after the US decide the guilt of the accused before any legal due process.

How about an in depth article on the UK government's people database schemes?

Response to many posts

@AC - Be fair chaps

[quote]Probably some of those 29 million are the same record being lost again...and again and again....[/quote]

May well be but, as it’s from a different department, there is, very likely to be, extra data from the records lost that will enhance better ID fraud based on all the previous data this government has decided to give away.

One might believe that this is a deliberate tactic to further the establishment of even more draconian rules that tout the necessity of an ID database so that any personal data “in the wild” can be matched against it in order to stop the terrorists playing out their destruction of the non-complicit with their view.

@Aetyr - Of course they lost it...

[quote]Yes, the current government believes that it is impossible to crack a Windows password, despite there being hundreds of freely downloadable tools on the intarwebnets which will do just that.[/quote]

Absolutely correct. And if you can't be bothered to seek the tools just boot up WinPE on a CD and the access the data without worrying about finding a password. I believe this doesn't apply to Vista though - but I will test that theory tomorrow.

@Jim - Re: Yet another reason against socialism...

[quote]Yeah, cos the private sector is so much better at keeping peoples details safe...[/quote]

The private sector may not be that much better, but as soon as a punter finds out that the company they use has screwed up they can change allegiances, within a few days. The same is not true for government - this is one of the myriad of reasons why allowing government the power over personal data is a complete nightmare and ultimately will lead to the destruction of our democracy.

I do wonder why there are so many Register news items that basically expose our current government’s “no nothing bonzo” strategy on decent IT, especially, when ultimately, it will lead to their downfall – it’s nonsensical; however, perhaps, this video (http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=3664960863576873594) may provide some kind of insight – but then again it may not. Who knows?

Also I wonder why The Register is not digging deeper; are their journalist too scared?

@Robert Davey

<quote>@Simon.W

"How will your employer view you after being a suspect in a rape case; guilty or innocent, mud sticks."

That's a problem with attitude and employment discrimination law, not the database.</quote>

Yeah - but you've missed the point totally - you'll only be in a compromised position because of the db.

What are you trying to say? That no-one who has been falsely accused of something has ever lost their job or even ability to work in their preferred profession? You are living in cloud cuckoo land. Might as well bring back hanging as the db is so infallible. Twat

Possibly a naive observation

for the internet at least, wouldn't the simple solution be to force any 18+ content to be hosted on domains with a gTLD of .XXX and make sure ISPs provide a “No .XXX domain access” option in their set up software? At the end of the day shouldn't it be the parents/guardians that are made responsible for the access their children get to such content instead of instituting yet another government office for the frittering of tax-payers' money. £9M - FFS

How much more bullshit is this government going to dish out?

As stated in the article;

<quote>The Ministry of Justice says: "The Ministry of Justice's IT Systems are unable to provide a record of Wikipedia entries which have been created and amended by special advisers, Ministers and communications officials since August 2005."</quote>

To my knowledge, without configuration (and I don't mean my knowledge), the systems that allow access to the Internet, by default, register IP addresses and where they're going; it's part and parcel of IP connectivity; there is always a way.

So if we can assume (in all probability) that outward bound IP addresses can be linked to their destinations, then it is only a very small step thereafter that can link the connection from a government IP address to the Wikipedia address.

However the statement that <paraphrase>we are unable to provide access records since 2005</paraphrase> is correct, because the default "logs" would have been overwritten over that time.

But intimating it is not possible is a down right lie and just shows how far this government is willing to go to misrepresent itself in order to push through its dictatorial regime.

To all sane people this is just another red flag as to the contempt Labour holds us in.

The bottom line is; either they have a policy to bullshit the public at large when it comes to statements on their IT capabilities (and other things notwithstanding) or they are totally pig ignorant. (Sorry pigs of the porcine nature but it is a recognised turn of phrase and probably needs to be updated to something like "totally labour ignorant.")

In this digital age, which we are now in, all of us punters should now be vying for a change to those who currently rule us and are apparently deaf to 21st century common sense.

Political Correctness gone mad (as ever)

I can't understand what is wrong with allowing women to choose the careers they want, instead of being bullied into taking up careers, those in the "know", feel they should be taking up.

Perhaps this is just an indirect way the remaining misogynist population can circumvent the fact that us guys are no better than the fairer folk of our society, with the aim of demonstrating women, those that have been forced into careers they’re not interested in, are not up to par.

Anyone who has been placed in a role they’re not happy with, male or female, will fail to achieve; it’s the nature of doing a job you don’t want to do.

Why is the government still going down this route?

If no-one's quite realised it yet, it's obviously something Blair thought up to please Bush and not only did Blair promise Britain’s sole, he promised our eyes, finger prints, toe prints, DNA, the whole bloody lot to ensure he would have the backing of Bush Dictatorship LLC when he eventually gave up his role as PM.

The government must be aware that if they carry on with this ID farce they're quite unlikely to get in again so there must be something going on behind the scenes for them to continue.

Perhaps they'll announce that only people with valid ID cards can vote; that wouldn't surprise me.

@ Rolf Howarth

You obviously do not have enough of an idea about the general way how emails get transmitted across the wire. It is very simple to run a packet capture (network sniffer) for just one minute and pull out all the email details from that data. The only way to give email a modicum of security is to ensure it is encrypted end to end.

Email is secure - PAH! Twat.

Why don't all the bloody governments...

stop covering up what they really want to do in the guise of some kind of mega-identification database and

tattoo everyone at birth,

then they'll have a real biometric that refers directly to the unique key field in their db.

Because this is what it really is about.

Sign up to the No2ID campaign to stop this abuse of reason before it’s too late.

http://www.no2id.net

Now we know why...

the government wants to bring in Id cards - it's to replace all the data they've lost.

Auditing - we don't do it, but we know a man who can.

Even with all that's gone on the PM said (as reported)

[quote] ....that the ICO should be able to carry out spot checks on government departments to audit their data protection procedures.[/quote]

Though all large private companies have to be audited, something that is carried out internally and externally at least twice a year, this government seems to admit it is not something that is currently undertaken - how do they get away with this?

Then there's the Newsnight interview with a treasury spokesperson who states that there will be lessons learnt. Is the storage of private citizen's personal data something new, something that has just started to happen in the last two months? NO, it's been happening for decades.

The biggest problem today, in the public and even the private sectors is that the larger the remuneration package you're on tends to be directly proportional to your IT illiteracy.

All too often the “junior official’s” judgement and thoughts, those that work at the technical level, are dismissed and policies defined to secure data are waved aside to facilitate those in the higher echelons who are IT backward and think it beneath them to learn how to use the IT tools provided to them, appropriately.

When it comes to government there should not be one single person responsible for any IT capability in a position where not-knowing would denigrate the security of any individual’s personal data security.

IT education isn’t enough; it’s significant IT experience that truly counts.