Hope this doesn't happen in America, but mostly likely will.... (ID cards, spy camera

[KeithPA]

Two articles talking about how our country may be someday. Already is quite alot like this in NYC. No guns, Cameras watching everything, and well soon we'll all have our National ID cards with biometric data on it

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...Zrcj4&refer=uk

George Orwell Was Right: Spy Cameras See Britons' Every Move

By Nick Allen

Dec. 22 (Bloomberg) -- It's Saturday night in Middlesbrough, England, and drunken university students are celebrating the start of the school year, known as Freshers' Week.

One picks up a traffic cone and runs down the street. Suddenly, a disembodied voice booms out from above:

``You in the black jacket! Yes, you! Put it back!'' The confused student obeys as his friends look bewildered.

``People are shocked when they hear the cameras talk, but when they see everyone else looking at them, they feel a twinge of conscience and comply,'' said Mike Clark, a spokesman for Middlesbrough Council who recounted the incident. The city has placed speakers in its cameras, allowing operators to chastise miscreants who drop coffee cups, ride bicycles too fast or fight outside bars.

Almost 70 years after George Orwell created the all-seeing dictator Big Brother in the novel ``1984,'' Britons are being watched as never before. About 4.2 million spy cameras film each citizen 300 times a day, and police have built the world's largest DNA database. Prime Minister Tony Blair said all Britons should carry biometric identification cards to help fight the war on terror.

``Nowhere else in the free world is this happening,'' said Helena Kennedy, a human rights lawyer who also is a member of the House of Lords, the upper house of Parliament. ``The American public would find such inroads into civil liberties wholly unacceptable.''

During the past decade, the government has spent 500 million pounds ($1 billion) on spy cameras and now has one for every 14 citizens, according to a September report prepared for Information Commissioner Richard Thomas by the Surveillance Studies Network, a panel of U.K. academics.

Who's In Charge?

At a single road junction in the London borough of Hammersmith, there are 29 cameras run by police, government, private companies and transport agencies. Police officers are even trying out video cameras mounted on their heads.

``We've got to stand back and see where technology is taking us,'' said Thomas, whose job is to protect people's privacy. ``Humans must dictate our future, not machines.''

Blair said citizens have to sacrifice some freedoms to fight terrorism, illegal immigration and identity fraud.

``We have a modern world that we are living in, with new and different types of crime,'' Blair said Nov. 6 at a press conference in London. ``If we don't use technology in order to combat it, then we won't be fighting crime effectively.''

Constant Monitoring

In the bowels of New Scotland Yard, the headquarters of the London police force, a windowless room contains a giant bank of TV screens where the city is monitored around the clock. At the touch of a button, officers can focus on any neighborhood and zoom in on people's faces.

Police hunting the killer of five prostitutes in Suffolk were able to gather 10,000 hours of footage from in and around Ipswich.

By 2016, there will be cameras using facial recognition technology embedded in lampposts, according to the Surveillance Studies report. Unmanned spy planes will monitor the movements of citizens, while criminals and the elderly will be implanted with microchips to track their movements, the report says.

``The level of surveillance in this country should shock people,'' said David Murakami Wood, a lecturer at the University of Newcastle who headed the study. ``It is infiltrating everything we do.''

Wood is also concerned about the U.K.'s growing DNA database. The files contain the genetic codes of more than 3.8 million people, or 5.2 percent of the population. By comparison, the U.S. has the DNA records of 0.5 percent of its residents.

DNA matches helped solve 45,000 crimes in the U.K. last year, including 422 murders, 645 rapes and 9,000 burglaries, according to the Home Office. But the database isn't foolproof.

Burglar Who Wasn't

Police who knocked on Raymond Easton's door in Swindon, England, in 1999 were certain he had committed burglary at a house 200 miles (300 kilometers) away. DNA found at the scene was a 37 million-to-1 match with Easton's sample, which had been taken three years earlier.

Easton, a former construction worker, had Parkinson's disease and could barely dress himself. He was still charged. Further tests proved he had never been to Bolton, where the burglary occurred, according to the Greater Manchester police.

``Britain's DNA database is spiraling out of control,'' said Helen Wallace, deputy director of GeneWatch U.K., which campaigns for responsible use of genetic science. ``It could allow an unprecedented level of government surveillance.''

Other government plans include loading the confidential medical records of 50 million patients in the state-run health system onto a central database without their consent.

Most controversial of all are Blair's biometric ID cards linked to a national register holding every citizen's fingerprints, iris or face scan. Starting in 2010, anyone renewing or applying for a passport will have to get one.

``Desperate for some sort of legacy, the prime minister has nothing to offer but Blair's Big Brother Britain,'' said Phil Booth, national coordinator of the anti-ID card group NO2ID.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...2/24/nid24.xml

A draconian regime of fines, which would hit families at times of marriage and death, is being drawn up by ministers to enforce the Identity Card scheme.


The first cards will be issued by the Identity and Passport Service to passport applicants in 2009


Millions of people, from struggling students to newly-wed women and bereaved relatives, will face a system of penalties, netting more than £40 million for the Treasury.

People would be fined up to £1,000 for failing to return a dead relative's ID card, while women who marry will have to pay at least £30 for a new card if they want to use their married name, risking a £1,000 fine if they do not comply.

The revelations will fuel debate over ID cards in the countdown to their nationwide introduction, which the Government claims will boost security, tackle identity fraud and prevent illegal working. But costs are soaring and the technology has failed in tests.

The Government says people will have to pay £30 for a simple ID card, or more than £90 for one with a passport. Experts, however, claim that the cost of a combined card could be as high as £300, pushing the implementation costs beyond £20 billion.

advertisementDavid Davis, the shadow home secretary, said the fines revelation shows that the scheme "will hit the taxpayer not the terrorists" and is "just another Labour stealth tax".

He said: "It is shocking that the Government is considering charges and fines on people at some of the most sensitive times in life. The Conservatives would scrap this plastic poll tax and invest the savings in practical measures to improve security."

The first cards will be issued by the Identity and Passport Service to passport applicants in 2009 and will become compulsory from 2010.

As well as a picture, the card will carry a microchip holding biometric information such as fingerprints, iris or facial scans. Everyone over 16 applying for a passport will have these details added to a National Identity Register from 2008.

The extent of the fines for minor infringements is revealed in written answers from John Reid, the Home Secretary, and other ministers. They show that the Government is drawing up sinister sounding "guidance on death registration" which will order bereaved families to return the card of their deceased relative within a specified period. Failure to do so would carry a £1,000 fine under the "invalidity and surrender of ID cards" section of the Identity Cards Act 2006.

Mr Reid confirmed: "We intend to work closely with the General Registrar Offices to ensure that the notification of death and return of the ID card can be done in a sensitive manner."

Joan Ryan, the Home Office minister, said that charges would apply "if a person wished to add a married surname to his or her register entry". Based on an estimate of 311,000 marriages a year, that would net up to £9 million a year for the Exchequer.

People would be charged at least £30 for lost or stolen cards. Based on the 930,000 driving licences lost or stolen each year, this would earn the Treasury more than £28 million a year, say the Tories.

Mr Davis said the potential scale of the fines — those two areas of card "infringement" alone could bring in up to £40 million a year for the Treasury — proved that ID cards were a new stealth tax.

In a separate plan that the Tories say could hit millions of students, Mr Reid admitted that applicants will be asked for "all current alternative addresses". Failure to update the register with details such as term-time halls of residence could result in a £1,000 fine.

There was also anger over the disclosure that all fees and fines will be paid directly into the Treasury's central funds for general spending and not go towards running the scheme.

[LorDiego01]

LOL!! THis has been going on for many years already.

The difference is that 10 years ago, it was called Conspiracy theories, today, its called in-your-face-reality.

Now BOW DOWN AND OBEY SLAVE!!!!

[tes151]

The reason they will get away with that over there is because the people let the government disarm them. This is exactly the reason we should never get that complacent here.