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It was set up to point a finger at the erosion of personal freedom in the UK.
Government's active measures introduce new means of control such as identity cards and surveillance cameras, the passive measures such as weakening of double jeopardy and presumption of innocence.


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Gabriel Syme and Perry de Havilland of Samizdata.net to rally the Anglosphere behind the UK.
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Saturday, March 20, 2004
Blunkett raises spectre of fingerprinting entire EU population!
Perry de Havilland (London)
(0)   Big Brother • Biometrics • European Union

Mentioned en passant in another alarming article in which David Blunkett threatens yet further abridgements of civil liberties under the guise of 'fighting terrorism', it is noted he and the European Commission advocated the idea of...

Joining forces with the Commission, Mr Blunkett backed proposals for a fingerprint data base of all EU citizens and tougher measures to tackle terrorist funding.

Oh wonderful.


Comments

am i allowed to post in this blog?

Posted by: bob on March 21, 2004 02:00 AM

1) The government cannot keep data secret. 200,000 known cases last year of medical records being revealed to people who shouldn't have had access.

2) Fingerprints are easy to forge. Rubber fingerprints are easy to make given a photograph of a print.

3) There hasn't been any modern scientific analysis of fingerprints as a means of identification.

Now consider a criminal who is clever. He/they download some fingerprints and leave then at a crime scene. Say Blunket, Blair and Brown's dabs are found all over a crime scene. Now what? A defense lawyer will have a field day.

The unforseen consequence of Blunket's scheme will be that finger print evidence will lose the ability to do what he is trying to do, namely be used as evidence in court cases.

Madness.

Posted by: nick on March 21, 2004 09:43 AM

Bob, of course you can, as long as you do not threaten anyone...

Posted by: Gabriel Syme on March 21, 2004 11:01 AM

er.. you removed my post.. in which i threaterned no one..

im a little confuse.. can you claify the rules..

and whens the next blogparty .. am i invited?

Posted by: bob on March 21, 2004 08:14 PM

Well Bob, I guess I need to tell the guys to stop deleting you on sight then (we have quite a large team of contributors). Don't threaten anyone and things will be just peachy.

Posted by: Perry de Havilland on March 21, 2004 08:53 PM

ive never threatened anyone.. its that french geezer he dont like me.. cos i got around his IP block.. it mean its hardly a fool proof system is it..

Posted by: bob on March 21, 2004 09:51 PM

oh thats you ... HI .

so am i invited to the next party?

Posted by: bob on March 22, 2004 01:03 AM

If you don't act like an ass, you can post comments. That said, our blogs are our property for that reason alone we reserve the right to delete anyone's comments... and as you do not have a blog of your own, it would be a fair bet you are not going to get invited to any blog parties. Plus yeah, I don't like you, not because you can get around an IP block (hardly a difficult thing to do). As the fact is I can have your posts deleted with less effort that it takes you to post them, that is no big deal. I don't like you because I dislike your counterproductive ideas and the fact you are in impolite ass. If you want to engage in any further off-topic conversations, e-mail direct or I will start deleteing off topic comments.

Posted by: Perry de Havilland on March 22, 2004 01:42 AM

This is typical Blunkett. As you wrote over on Samizdata, it is amazing the idiot Tories are just sitting there about as useful as tits on a bull instead of leaping up and down and calling for his head.

And what is this Bob guy on? I guess blogs get there share of strange creatures too. As any educated Englishman knows, de Havilland is an old Anglo-Norman name with a glorious history in British aviation. My father used to work for de Havilland at Hatfield in the 1950s. Are you any relative to those de Havillands?

Posted by: Arthur Dacre on March 22, 2004 10:09 AM

As I clearly missed whatever went previously, the above exchange is somewhat surreal....

On topic - how, exactly, does BB expect to overcome the logistics of fingerprinting the entire EU population? And, specifically, the logistics of dealing with concerted disobedience from an organised minority?

Posted by: Mark Ellott on March 22, 2004 11:22 AM

Off topic remarks deleted

Posted by: bob on March 22, 2004 11:39 AM

Off topic remarks deleted... we do invite public comments, but as we own the site, we also reserve the right to delete anything we feel like deleting if it is offensive, off topic or, as we feel no need to humour people who we don't like, just because we feel like it.

Posted by: bob on March 22, 2004 01:37 PM

Yes, I am related to those de Havillands. English since 1066

Posted by: Perry de Havilland on March 22, 2004 06:45 PM

agreed.

Anyway- a full EU database of biometric identifiers is taking things a bit too far- It would be impossible to get it even slightly accurate- and there would be so many similar matches. This whole crap just pisses me off- and all that fast-tracking the ID card system in, whats all that?? Why haven't the Tories done anything- why is eveyone just taking this??

Gah, i'm so pissed off right now- I've still got another 2000 words to write on these damn cards

Posted by: ash on March 25, 2004 12:18 PM
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