Speaker: Database Nation
122 Responses
First ←Older Page 1 2 3 4 5 Newer→ Last
-
I am one of many many people in NZ who has been troubled by obscene and/or threatening text messages sent from an unregistered prepaid phone.
Or simply allow any mobile user to killfile a phone number easily.
I suspect that if criminals want untraceable phones, they will simply steal them.
-
There used to be an on again/off again policy of logging all cellphone purchases at a retailer I used to work for at university - name/address/phone number/IMEI number etc. I assume they provided that information to Vodafone but who really knows
-
From the letters section of today's Daily Telegraph
Letters to the Telegraph
Creeping identity cardsSir - From today, the Government is issuing what it calls "ID cards for foreigners". These will affect students and those marrying Britons.
Over time, residents from outside Europe will be fingerprinted and have to account for their movements. Later, so would we all.
Refugees and the unskilled poor have nothing to lose, but successful foreigners such as Robinho or Kevin Spacey, and the overseas students who subsidise our universities, have a lot of choice over where they study or exercise their talents.
Some will decide Britain has become too unfriendly. When America introduced more hostile visa conditions three or four years ago, Bill Gates complained that Microsoft could no longer hire some of the best software engineers.
If this scheme is continued it will lead to less fee income and lower international status for our educational institutions. British students will have to pay higher tuition to make up, and will have less money to spend with local businesses. Fewer of the world's leading performers in every field will choose to make their homes here.
We value the contribution that these people make, economically and culturally, to our institutions and our society. We think our country should treat them as guests, not criminal suspects.
Phil Booth, National Coordinator, NO2ID
Guy Herbert, General Secretary, NO2IDGlad to see a little debate on the issue that doesn't revolve around the 'cost to the taxpayer' which Britons currently seem to treat as the main barrier in introducing ID cards.
-
the interesting thing on the id-to-get-a-phone thing is, at heathrow, you can get a SIM card from a vending machine.
Seriously. O2, Vodafone, Orange, etc. Put your £10 in (for £10 credit on the phone), plug it in, make calls. Easy. Totally untracable. Just BYO handset (not hard - expansys.co.uk)
-
Bizarre. I find it very hard to follow the phone company's contradictions in policy. I tried to purchase a sim card from orange.co.uk when I first arrived in the UK but was required to enter such details as past addresses. Because they were NZ based, I was told I needed to place a £100 security deposit.
consequently I went to the dodgy corner shop and picked one up for £1.
-
I was given two sim cards from various agencies when I first arrived. And bought one for the 3 Network without any bother at all.
Incidentally, when I called to register for an NI number I was told not to worry- they would have all my information on file since I had just completed the visa application process and would simply transfer it across. Three months later I still waiting for them to admit that this actually isn't possible...even though it does sound SO SIMPLE.
-
This ties together several discussion threads in the last few weeks.
DNA samples of about two million Kiwis should be destroyed or transferred to a secure authority to avoid possible abuse from the dizzying pace of technology, the Privacy Commission says.
The DNA samples taken from a heel-prick test of babies born since the late 1960s is "banked" indefinitely as part of the National Screening Unit's Newborn Metabolic Screening Programme.
Originally intended to check for childhood diseases, the samples have also been used in paternity cases and to identify crime victims.
But Privacy Commissioner Marie Shroff has cautioned that the indefinite retention of heel-prick blood samples "presents risks for the programme's participants and potentially the programme itself".
Personally I'm very pessimistic about holding back attacks on privacy. If you look at the circumstances in which our current civil rights were established - gross abuse, often amongst civil strife - it was obvious then what the potential harms were. I don't think we'll get people behind privacy rights or surveillance restriction until gross abuses are obvious and widespread.
Alternatively, perhaps I should be optimistic. Apparently most people have great faith in the state agencies that would collect and use such data. Maybe they're right and I'm wrong. How neat that would be.
-
I've purchased two pre-pay cards as well - no checking on either account, one of which was Orange.
-
I believe the telcos would like to have customer names and addresses for commercial reasons (i.e. to try and sell stuff). Against that, it's a lot easier to ship boxes into the supply chain and not worry about where they go than to have to operate a registration process. Particularly if your customer service is dysfunctional anyway, like Vodafone's.
-
I keep getting hits on my website with the keyword surveillance (today with very explicit anxiety "do we live in an age of surveillance") and they're mostly from the UK. I don't think it's going unnoticed there somehow, and there could be a tipping point that turns it into a cause worth fighting for.
I'm surprised OTOH at how in the US the whole surveillance thing - which goes so much more against their ethos and tradition of government - doesn't seem to have shocked the conscience quite as much. But maybe I've got this thing completely wrong.
-
I'm surprised OTOH at how in the US the whole surveillance thing - which goes so much more against their ethos and tradition of government - doesn't seem to have shocked the conscience quite as much. But maybe I've got this thing completely wrong.
No, you've pretty much got it right. And as Andrew Smith put it "When I told my colleagues that the US is a paranoid nation, they just smiled nicely and told me that NZ had never suffered an attack with 3000 deaths."
That's their justification. They're terrified out of their wits because their feeling of superiority and invulnerability was thoroughly shaken, and they want to get it back. Anything that can be done "to catch the terrists" is "a good thing"[tm]. They don't get that every step down the path of suppression of freedoms is another victory for the terrorists. My "I don't care about future generations" friend, every time I say the terrorists have won, responds "No they haven't. Americans still get on planes. They still fly. They still have jobs."I've observed many times that if Israel, Spain, or even the UK, responded to their historic (in Israel's case on-going) terrorist situations with the same vigour as the Americans have behaved post 11/9, everyone would be forced to walk their streets naked, if they were even allowed out at all, and houses would have to be constructed entirely of transparent glass so that the authorities could observe all goings-on therein.
-
I've observed many times that if Israel, Spain, or even the UK, responded to their historic (in Israel's case on-going) terrorist situations with the same vigour as the Americans have behaved post 11/9, everyone would be forced to walk their streets naked, if they were even allowed out at all, and houses would have to be constructed entirely of transparent glass so that the authorities could observe all goings-on therein.
I don't kow about Israel, but Europe started at a much greater level of bureaucratic meddling into the private lives of its citizens. In the States you can pretty much start a new life with a new name wherever you want - at least that's the film cliche. Check into a hotel showing your Disney Club card, you know... In Italy, if I move to another town the frist thing I'm supposed to do is tell the local police and the police in the rown I'm from (let alone all the other agencies that want to know where I live). Hell, when I came to New Zealand I was supposed to notify the police back in Milan. I didn't, until we had our first child, and then I had no choice but to do it. And we had ID cards way before the UK, and not carrying one gets you a fine if not a trip to a police station.
-
Gio, that's not a result of terrorism, though. And does Italy have arbitrary detention in a military prison, without trial or legal advocacy?
I realised that NZ's attitude to the kind of surveillance society that the UK is building is exemplified in the legal requirements for toll roads, where any system must have at least one anonymous method of payment. Until it's legal to require anyone who uses your roads to register with a system that'll track their movements, we're a long way away from their nonsense.
-
I have a theory that Italy can disprove most rules. From the little I hear about it seems such a crazy country in many ways.
A colleague who goes there every year will finish telling a story about Italy with the phrase "it's very Italian" as an explanation. And then he'll impart another story about why he loves the place so much, not so much in spite of the first story, but because of it.
-
Gio, that's not a result of terrorism, though.
I'm not sure whether it's because of terrorism or not, but Italy has suffered a lot more terrorist incidents in the past 50 years than the USA has, so it's not out of the question that it relates to terrorism.
-
And does Italy have arbitrary detention in a military prison, without trial or legal advocacy?
During our terrorism decade you bet we did. And we do for mafia crimes too, on and off. Plenty of snooping there too, the extent of the freedom to do so changes in waves depending on the government of the day (and how pro or anti-mafia they are, much more than pro- or anti- privacy).
-
Matthew, do you really think that what is legal is what will be implemented or enforced? Regardless of whether that article I linked to earlier is totally credible in its conclusions, it provides at least one local example where it seems there was a significant difference between what was signed off and what was delivered.
Devolution of disability services for over-65 year olds to DHBs has a similar gap between what Cabinet explicitly agreed to and what their agents have quietly got away with since - which is why I'm more inclined to believe that the Privacy Commissioner's concerns about the photo drivers licenses have some grounds.
I wouldn't go putting all my faith in our comparatively uncorrupt bureacracy just yet. That lack of corruption ironically makes it easy for a determined person of scant morals to cause a lot of damage.
-
I'm not sure whether it's because of terrorism or not
The ID card thing? No, it isn't, it's been going on for over a century. It's how the state was modelled, on the French and German models of bureaucratic control. Foucault writes splendidly on this.
-
The Metro Card in Christchurch records your trips and the buses have cameras in them. Making the user pay for waste is another positive move to empower consumers to make better packaging choices. To this point I see no problem.
I'm currently trying to get a CCTV in place at Riccarton Bush as a Resource Consent to fence it off and close the cycle way after dark is being worked on as we speak, to protect from vandalism.
The parrellel process is the increased ability to charge for access to the Houses, Bush & Grounds of the Trust gifted to Canterbury.Of course the cheaper option is to charge directly for packaging on 6 packs and not 1/2Gs or crates (Steinlager please bring out a version in crates) and save the expense of the chips in bins & of course have more eyes on a place for the safety of crowds.
-
I've observed many times that if Israel, Spain, or even the UK, responded to their historic (in Israel's case on-going) terrorist situations with the same vigour
Matthew, have you been to Israel?
At minimum your bags are searched on entry to any public building - hospital, shopping mall, whatever. There is an active secret police and censorship regime - trifling in comparison with its neighbours, but onerous compared to most Western democracies. And there is unlimited "administrative detention", ie imprisonment without trial, which includes citizens.
The difference between the US and the Israeli security approach is that the US implementation is crap (eg their ludicrous airport theatre, lack of Arabic speakers in intelligence agencies, unwillingness to impose costs on business) whereas the Israelis are effective, which in turn reflects the relative severity of the threats they face.
Apropos Europe in general, a German friend of mine who moved here recently was aghast at how lax we are. To her, registering with the police on arrival is just common sense... my pointing out that the imperial secret police thought so too fell on deaf ears.
-
I believe I was supposed to register with the police within 24 hours when I visited China in 2006, because I was staying with a local family. I managed not to do so for a good two months, until the requirement popped up as a roadblock when I came to get my tourist visa renewed. We went to a police station and promptly got retroactive signoff for my presence, and everything was gravy.
I think I was supposed to declare myself when we went to stay in hotels as well, but the question never arose. They're almost certainly far tougher on it in the wake of the Olympics though. Can't imagine having to get full documentation for longer stays. Mr Taslov, your thoughts?
-
Matthew, have you been to Israel?
At minimum your bags are searched on entry to any public building - hospital, shopping mall, whatever. There is an active secret police and censorship regime - trifling in comparison with its neighbours, but onerous compared to most Western democracies. And there is unlimited "administrative detention", ie imprisonment without trial, which includes citizens.
I said: "if Israel, Spain, or even the UK, responded to their historic (in Israel's case on-going) terrorist situations with the same vigour as the Americans have behaved post 11/9...". Please point to where anything any of you has said contradicts that.
All you're doing is completely missing my point, which was that, whatever the security situations in those countries are like now, if they'd behaved as the Americans have it'd be so much worse!
-
I think there's a difference between vigour and inept crappiness..
-
Favourite NZ terror moment was at Christchurch Airport & a day bag/back pack was on the zebra crossing with a tube of toothpaste next to it. It had obviously fallen off a trolly on the way to the car etc. So I moved it off the road and next to a rubbish tin. (My bad)
Then came back out of the airport to see the airport security & police taking some interest in the bag.
I could see the next three hours being a real drag if you had to be anywhere. Popped over told them the story to date and picked up the bag. No worries & Mr Christies friends took it from there. -
told me that NZ had never suffered an attack with 3000 deaths
- 20,000 died in the Musket Wars
- 2,700 died at Gallipolli
Post your response…
This topic is closed.