Open Rights Group campaign

The Open Rights Group have a campaign against the Intercept Modernisation Programme. I reproduce a 'model' letter that they suggest you can use to write to your MP. It sums up the issues neatly.

I am writing to express my concern at the proposed Intercept Modernisation Programme. I understand this may contain plans to collect details of who I send emails to and the people I contact via Facebook and other social networking sites.

I understand that there are also discussions around centralising all internet traffic data in a series of databases accessible by the government, thereby gaining permanent easy access to the data being held by Internet Service Providers.

I believe this is likely to be an expensive waste of time, and a gross invasion of citizens’ privacy. There will be serious risks if a large number of civil servants can access extremely personal information, such as who someone contacts by email or Facebook message. Although I presume there would continue to be legal barriers, in practice we all know that it is possible, once information is made accessible, for information to be wrongly accessed, distributed or lost.

I am also convinced that any serious criminal or terrorist will not use normal email or social networking sites to plan and communicate about their activities. Collection of information will, however, make it much more routine to use anonymisation and encryption technologies to hide their activities. This will mean the proposals will make it harder, not easier, to get evidence.

At the same time, It is possible that legitimate protesters and campaigners will use normal electronic communications, which puts these people carrying out legal activities at risk of abuse.

I am also concerned about the possibility that such information will be analysed for suspicious patterns, in processes called ‘data mining’. This would put many innocent people under scrutiny. As Bruce Schneier, the renowned security expert says:

“Terrorist plots are different … attacks are very rare. This means that even very accurate systems will be so flooded with false alarms that they will be useless: millions of false alarms for every one real attack, even assuming unrealistically accurate systems.”See here.

Fundamentally, ‘traffic data’ is an integral and private part of any communication, as the European Court of Human Rights has already agreed. Collecting it, storing it and analysing it must be done only to address very serious concerns of public safety, targeted at individuals, not in order to carry out mass surveillance.

I urge you to bring these concerns to the light of the Home Secretary.

Smart Alec

Geneticist Sir Alec Jeffreys, the developer of DNA fingerprinting and profiling told
the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee that he was "astonished, perplexed and deeply worried" about the existing management policy of the National DNA Database. See Kable.
Sir Alec added that innocent people should be taken off the database and that he would object profoundly if his own DNA was put onto the system.

"DNA is intimately different to fingerprinting, it carries incredibly intimate information about who you are, where you're from and your family," said Jeffreys. He made reference to a recorded suicide due to an innocent person's shame at being on the database and pointed out that the likelihood of a false match "was not zero".

Not seeing the police for the acronyms?

The Register reports that the police now have more than 10,000 ANPR cameras and and are passing up to 14m reads per day from automatic numberplate recognition cameras to a national database which is run by the National Policing Improvement Agency quango (NPIA) on behalf of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO Ltd).

Confused? Not to worry, the NPIA organises lots of training schemes at a competitive rate. It's even helped train hundreds of police across the world including Saudi Arabia!! The mind boggles. However, policing is a commercial enterprise and wages, at present running at over £100 million annually for the NPIA alone, must be paid.

The NPIA costs (you) £566 million a year and, of this, IT and consultants cost over £300 million. The NPIA charges police forces for its services eg £33 million for access to INDENT1 - the fingerprint database, in order to pay its way.

The Police National Computer now holds over 9 million people records, 52 million driver records and 55 million vehicle records.

Yet, despite the high tech, many people are becoming victims of car cloning, where stolen vehicles are given false number plates and identity papers before being sold. Up to 130,000 blank logbooks, stolen in 2006, are still missing. Not to worry because, if you fail to display your car tax the ANPR is sure to spot this and send you a fine in the post, this will help fund the NPIA. Additionally if your number plates are cloned you may well get the fraudster's speeding tickets.

PS Quangos tend to grow like Topsy, for example -Secured By Design is managed by ACPO Crime Prevention Initiatives Limited (ACPO CPI) a "not for profit" company wholly owned by ACPO.

Pirate Party on the Digital Economy Bill

Andrew Robinson, leader of the Pirate Party UK briefly explains some of the perils relating to the Digital Economy Bill slowly wending its way through Parliament.

From the horse's mouth.

The national identity card is likely to be counterfeited, police have warned, see here.

At present there would appear to be about 12 card readers available in the UK to verify the authenticity of ID cards. As a result detective chief superintendent Nigel Mawer of the Metropolitan Police no less, states that:

As with any form of identification, it's likely that the ID card scheme would be targeted by people creating false IDs...It's important that people invest in the equipment to enable them to tell if an ID card is genuine, to get the full benefit from an anti-crime perspective.

Detective chief inspector Nick Downing adds:

The cards are not widely distributed at the moment, and the Met has yet to see any fakes....but if the cards do come in across the UK, we will see them being counterfeited.

Saturday stall.

Birmingham NO2ID is holding its monthly stall in New Street, Birmingham from 10.00am to
4.00pm (opposite the Coventry Building Society). Anyone who wishes to help would be most welcome.
We hold a monthly stall on the last Saturday in the month. Contact birmingham@no2id.net for more information.

Is this a private joke?

Just when you thought internet snooping had stalled, we find that the government has created the Communications Capabilities Directorate (CCD) as a structure to implement the £2bn Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP) see here. The idea is for communications providers to maintain giant databases of everything their customers do online, including email, social networking, web browsing and making VoIP calls. They want providers to process the mass of data to link it to individuals, to make it easier for authorities to access.

The service providers foresee immense technical and civil libertarian problems but government is sanguine and, by the way, this is the fourth European Data Protection Day. In the UK the Information Commissioner's Office is supporting the initiative with activities to teach children, and their teachers, about the importance of privacy. The Information Commissioner has strongly criticised the IMP in the past, see here. I doubt he has a sense of humour.

Conservative civil liberty plans opaque.

The Tories have stated many times that they intend to scrap the ID card scheme and the retention of the DNA of innocent people. I asked for some clarification from Tory shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling:

# Do you also intend to remove names and personal details of innocent people who have been arrested from the Police National Database?
# I understand that you intend to scrap the NIR and just retain basic details on the passport database. However, do you intend to collect fingerprints?

To which I got the cryptic reply: Our plans are limited at present to our proposal to implement the Scottish system for the DNA database and also to abandon the NIR.

Under the Scottish system the DNA of innocent people who are not convicted of an offence have their DNA removed from your DNA database (apart from those charged with violent and sexual offences when the DNA is retained for 3 years).

However, the National Police Improving Agency, NPIA which is responsible for the National Fingerprint Database (IDENT1) states that:

Every person arrested in England, Scotland and Wales for a recordable offence has their fingerprints, palm prints and limited nominal data taken and entered onto the database. DNA and mug-shot photographs are also obtained. This data is synchronised with the "arrest record" on the Police National Computer (PNC) or on the Scottish Criminal History System (CHS).

A consultation in Scotland from February 2009 provides us with this proposal, to:

....bring the law on the retention of fingerprints taken from unconvicted persons into line with DNA retention provisions. Fingerprints and other relevant physical data will be retained from unconvicted persons only if proceedings have been raised against them for a relevant sexual or violent offence.

So, the Tories will use the Scottish system but the Scottish system at present would appear to retain the fingerprints and other personal data of innocent people.

Will the Tories follow any new Scottish system? Will they keep to the present Scottish system? They are certainly not saying.

As for fingerprints in passports - well they certainly aren't saying they intend to prevent these being on the passport database.

Home Office aids teenage drinkers.

The Evening Standard reports that London's teenagers are being encouraged to apply for ID cards.
People aged 18 to 24 will be able to spend £30 on a biometric photocard that can be used to prove their age when buying alcohol or age-restricted goods, to gain entry to a nightclub, or even to travel in Europe...

Home Office minister Meg Hillier said that the National Identity Card would be an “extremely useful tool, and ....with tough new laws clamping down on underage drinking, it will be more important than ever for young people to have access to a universally accepted proof of age.”

Ms Hillier does not mention that this also means having their personal details held on insecure government databases for the rest of their lives, that the cards could be worthless as the Tories and Lib Dems have promised to scrap them and that there are proof of age cards available for £10.

Police state grows apace.

The Guardian has a reply to a FOI request which foretells a bleak future for the UK population. If you thought that the surveillance society couldn't get much worse, think again. We are now to have unmanned drones spying on us from the sky. They should be in place, ready to 'protect' us, in time for the 2012 Olympics. Initially the scheme was intended for use over the English Channel to monitor shipping and detect immigrants crossing from France. However, the documents suggest the maritime focus was, at least in part, a public relations strategy designed to minimise civil liberty concerns.

Our police are also planning to use the drones for the routine monitoring of antisocial motorists, protesters, agricultural thieves and fly-tippers. They say that this will 'revolutionise policing'. A prototype drone equipped with high-powered cameras and sensors is ready for test flights later this year.

In addition, we are informed that: officers have talked about selling the surveillance data to private companies.

City Police making up ID powers.

More than 2,000 photographers attended the demonstration today in Trafalgar Square to proclaim their common-law right to take pictures in public places.

On the same day that the European Court of Human Rights ruled that stop and search powers under the Terrorism Act were too wide, it emerged that City of London police were claiming they may demand identification from photographers – powers that no legislation gives them. In a statement given to Amateur Photographer, City of London Police said:

"Photographers should carry identification where possible and be prepared to answer questions about why they are taking photographs, if they are asked."

Even under the controversial - now, arguably illegal - 'stop and account' powers in the Terrorism Act 2000, police have no power arbitrarily to demand you identify yourself, let alone produce documents on the spot. They can only do so in connection with the investigation of a suspected offence.

Phil Booth, NO2ID's National Coordinator, said:

"Even the Terrorism Act does not give police power to demand identification arbitrarily. In backing this 'advice to photographers' by vague menaces, the City force is trying to make it compulsory to carry ID in the square mile. Anyone with a mobile is a photographer nowadays.

It is not a free country where police make up powers to suit themselves. If what you are doing is lawful, then your identity no business of the police. This is a perfect illustration of the danger of the government’s ID scheme. They'll say they 'need to know'. They don't. Official ID obsession means harassment for citizens - legally or illegally."

Demonstration 23rd Jan.

I'm a Photographer, not a Terrorist! invite all Photographers to a mass photo gathering in defence of street photography. Saturday 23rd January 2010, Trafalgar Square

Good government IT - for once not an oxymoron.

Today modest genius, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, unveiled the public beta version of data.gov.uk, a website dedicated to opening up government statistics to the public. Much of this information has been available before, if you knew where to look. But – in Sir Tim’s words:

– “government data is something we have already spent the money on… and when it is sitting there on a disk in somebody’s office it is wasted.”

0.26% of Mancunians entrust their personal data to government for life.

From the ID card scheme's launch in Manchester on 30 November 2009 to 14 January 2010, 1,300 people who live in Greater Manchester have applied and attended an enrolment appointment for an ID card. See here. This equates to 0.26 per cent of the city's population.

The Home Office tells us that:
People want ID cards. Polling has showed a consistent 60 per cent of people support the National Identity Service. This has translated into more than 600 calls per day from people requesting application packs".

A spokesman for NO2ID told Public Servant Daily:
That the Home Office is fiddling the figures on the levels of public support for ID cards should come as no surprise - it's been doing so for years.

Meanwhile a Scottish doctor has illegally accessed the summary care records of celebrities and politicians, including Gordon Brown and Alex Salmond merely out of curiosity and will not be charged with any offences. See here. If Gordon has an ID card we do hope his 50 items of personal information, including fingerprints, are securely stored.