Prove Who You Are
Apr. 1st, 2006 11:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peteryoung
I am about to apply for a renewed British passort, and all I need now is a quick countersignature. The photograph is suitably misanthropic. My current one expires in June, but because I want as little as possible to do with the forthcoming Database Of Everything That Moves I would like to get it ASAP, and I suddenly find myself one of the unlucky tens of millions of Brits who do not have a parent born in Ireland.
As new passports are being issued this year with face-recognition and other personal data held in a chip (basically only being introduced because US paranoia insists on it), I may still as yet end up with such an "enhanced" passport, and I have no illusions about how insecure and open to abuse that and all the other information held on that chip will be. I have strong feelings about any government's obsession with a 'database society' and how such a modus operandi is perceived as being a potential cure-all for any number of society's failings, now and in the future, when in fact all it does is just collect identity data into one system around which the fraudelently-inclined types will gather like vultures. What I most object to is that our virtual 'official' lives here in the UK are fast becoming a necessary second skin for our real lives. We are already one of the most surveilled countries on Earth, and I wonder if there will ever be the political will to remove all this increasingly complex architecture of 'surveillance by stealth' that Brits are currently being subjected to, at a level that has often been compared with that of North Korea.
As new passports are being issued this year with face-recognition and other personal data held in a chip (basically only being introduced because US paranoia insists on it), I may still as yet end up with such an "enhanced" passport, and I have no illusions about how insecure and open to abuse that and all the other information held on that chip will be. I have strong feelings about any government's obsession with a 'database society' and how such a modus operandi is perceived as being a potential cure-all for any number of society's failings, now and in the future, when in fact all it does is just collect identity data into one system around which the fraudelently-inclined types will gather like vultures. What I most object to is that our virtual 'official' lives here in the UK are fast becoming a necessary second skin for our real lives. We are already one of the most surveilled countries on Earth, and I wonder if there will ever be the political will to remove all this increasingly complex architecture of 'surveillance by stealth' that Brits are currently being subjected to, at a level that has often been compared with that of North Korea.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-01 11:13 am (UTC)It's so much easier to give one's freedoms away than it is to get them back again. Which of course is why this sort of nonsense needs to be stopped before it happens. Sadly the situation is pretty similar in Australia - we follow the US blindly in this as we follow the US blindly in everything else.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-01 06:27 pm (UTC)Britain had basic ID cards during the Second World War and did the right thing by abolishing them some years after it was over, but we are in a different ongoing situation now.
I can't leave my house without seeing several examples of how we are becoming overtly monitered, such as CCTV on every street corner of every major town, and later this year the introduction of constantly-running Licence Plate Recognition cameras on all major roads in the whole country. This is to combat car-related crime (we are told), but the amount of data this will log on a daily basis is quite franky staggering. I'm still waiting for some over-zealous Home Secretary to announce "If you've done nothing wrong, why do you need privacy?"
no subject
Date: 2006-04-01 11:16 am (UTC)and thankfully, I *do* have a parent born in the Republic of Ireland, so I shall be investigating not replacing my UK passport at all in very short order.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-01 06:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-01 11:37 am (UTC)I really have to check about renewing my passport. *sigh*
n fact all it does is just collect identity data into one system around which the fraudelently-inclined types will gather like vultures.
Yeah, basically. I'm not sure how having everything in one place is going to make identity theft harder in any way. Similar to "let's make everyone store their guns at a gun club, so the robbers know just where to hit to get the weapons", which struck me as being stupid in the extreme.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-01 06:30 pm (UTC)I will ask
no subject
Date: 2006-04-01 11:55 am (UTC)And to make matters worse, my great-grandfather was Irish (grandparent required for citizenship) and my grandfather was Canadian (parent required, I think). The only alternative citizenship either of us can get without naturalisation is Israeli, and
no subject
Date: 2006-04-01 01:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-01 01:14 pm (UTC)The interesting features are that, if you normally wear glasses, you are supposed to wear them in the photo. Now, I do normally wear glasses, but they are prescription mirror shades, which aren't allowed. So, to stick with the rules, I took along my 'normal' glasses, which rarely go further than about 60cm from my computer, and wore them for the photo.
Then there is the requirement that your hair not cover your face. Mine does, so to stick with the rules, I gelled it back so that none of it touched my face.
You can't see any make-up in the photo, but I'm wearing tons of it. After all, the level of freckles on my face varies with the season, and my face is quite shiny, which can make it hard to photograph, so I put on a matt foundation to cut down on the reflections. The rest is vanity - I also used make-up to ensure that you can't see my double chin in the photo and I have slightly better bones in the photo than in real life.
Sister Athletica likes the picture - thinks I look like a female-to-male transsexual in it.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-01 03:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-01 06:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-01 06:09 pm (UTC)don't remind me...
Date: 2006-04-01 04:07 pm (UTC)So by summer time i should have saved enough to apply. at which point i'll probably get really millitant about all the biometric chip stuff.
Part of my job involves taking passport photos and recently people have had to return perfectly good photos because (i believe) of image recognition technology. it seems that the computer is incapable of deciphering a face wearing glasses. so now we do two sets of passport prints for spectacle wearers, one with, one without.
Strangely enough, the survalence talk reminded me of the first part of "Lexx" (may his Shadow be merciful...)
too far, maybe?
Re: don't remind me...
Date: 2006-04-01 06:02 pm (UTC)Is there enough space on the info page of a UK passport for two photos?
no subject
Date: 2006-04-01 05:00 pm (UTC)Also, biometrics are in the works everywhere, it seems, and it's only a matter of time before everyone has it. Big Brother couldn't be happier. Ugh.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-01 06:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-01 08:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-02 11:38 pm (UTC)?!?
Huh?!?
I really wish they'd make US passengers complete the US immigration cards before letting them back in. Now that would be funny.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-02 11:35 pm (UTC)I thought they already were? I'm just curious because I remember seeing large signs up around Niagara Falls reminding US tourists that drivers licences alone were no longer acceptable ID for cross-border travelling.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-01 06:57 pm (UTC)