ID cards are made of magic

Four Britons have been sentenced for their role in what has been described as one of the largest international online criminal networks stealing personal data.

[...] But the four British men were not acting alone, and formed part of what the US Department of Justice described as "one of the largest illegal online centres for trafficking in stolen identity information and documents". The website acted as a criminal e-bazaar—in effect an online auction site for the underworld. [BBC]

So what we urgently need is some kind of system that can concentrate all our data in one place so that dedicated criminals will have instant access not only to some scattered details of our lives but to every conceivable item—financial, legal, medical—of our personal data. To administer this comprehensive system we have the choice of low-paid, unmotivated and questionably skilled government employees (it might be quicker to establish if any data at all has been sent securely from HMRC in the past couple of years) or their counterparts in one of the government’s mysteriously favoured private sector companies (there are too many EDS stories to enumerate here, so I’ll just flag this, recall the near-collapse of the child support system and mention the most recent shitstain on their CV, which by their standards is relatively minor).

But it’s all right, because there’ll be biometrics! Ministers who do not understand technology have been parroting the party line that biometrics would have meant that the recent loss of 25 million people’s data was not a problem, because they probably think biometrics are some sort of species of friendly demon. The wishful thinking surrounding biometrics was illustrated in last week’s episode of Spooks, whose already fairytale technology—such as localised electromagnetic pulses that can be used to stop the good guys’ car but not wipe out the bad guys’ own van a hundred yards away—became even more fantastical when face-mapping technology grabbed an image from a tiny video camera of a guy’s face in three-quarter profile seen from below and matched it within seconds with his criminal record. They can do that, you know. That’s why they demand you sit exactly face-on for your passport photos with your eyes just, just there, no, back a bit, tilt your neck, no, that’s no good, do it again but with the seat lower, open your eyes wider, for God’s sake don’t smile or it’ll never recognise you, sorry, we’ll have to start again, can we do something about your nose?

What with infallible technology, the highest quality employees in charge of the day-to-day running of the scheme and such capable, trustworthy people in overall charge, what kind of swivel-eyed anarchist could possibly oppose the introduction of the ID card database?

Clear the court

I've just been reading about a court-martial in 1840 where the crowd of spectators applauded the defendant so loudly that the President of the proceedings, Major-General the Honourable Sir Hercules Pakenham, had cause to shout, “Clear the court this moment! I will have no such ebullitions!^[1]”

^[1] n. 1. The state or process of boiling 2. A sudden, violent outpouring, as of emotion

Great headline

[BBC]

“We just can’t find them sexy since they had that man shot in the face,” said the spouses of (contd.)