Blunkett: voluntary = bad, state-enforced = good

[Dead_Badger]

Truly, this man is the reason someone needs to invent some sort of long-range slapping device. From the BBC:

There should be more checks on the use of information collected through supermarket loyalty cards, Home Secretary David Blunkett has suggested.

In a speech, Mr Blunkett said the cards produced key details about people’s shopping habits but were accepted because they were run by the private sector.

On the same argument, people should not distrust his ID cards plans because they were a state idea, he said.

Goodness knows, the state could never have anything but our best interests in mind. No sir, for the life of me I can not see a difference in degree between a voluntary system of vegetable tracking and discounts, and a compulsory system of fingerprinting and police ID checks with violations punishable by law. Why, it was only yesterday that my local Sainsbury’s Enforcement Official pulled me over and demanded to see my spuds. Speaking of which, I cordially invite Mr. Blunkett to suck my balls.

[Nametag]

Jesus, you’re an idiot; try reading for comprehension:

In a speech, Mr Blunkett said the cards produced key details about people’s shopping habits but were accepted because they were run by the private sector.

On the same argument, people should not distrust his ID cards plans because they were a state idea, he said.

In other words, people make an unjustified assumption that private-sector ID cards are OK, but state ID cards are bad, despite the fact that the supermarkets collect far more data about people’s activities than he is planning to collect with his ID cards, or, as he said in the very same article,

The minister challenged the idea that if government was proposing something like the compulsory ID cards scheme it must be “inherently wrong, there’s going to be oppression” while people thought whatever private firms knew about them was perfectly legitimate.

[Dead_Badger]

@Nametag

Jesus, you’re an idiot; try reading for comprehension
…
In other words, people make an unjustified assumption that private-sector ID cards are OK, but state ID cards are bad, despite the fact that the supermarkets collect far more data about people’s activities than he is planning to collect with his ID cards, or, as he said in the very same article,

Who pissed in your shreddies? Do you actually know what the respective cards entail? It certainly seems that neither you nor Blunkett do. And since it is his wild misrepresentation of people’s opposition to ID cards that I am pitting, I find it somewhat odd that you use his cretinous assertions as evidence against me. Anyway, here are what the cards do:

The supermarket takes my name and address. They then watch what I buy and give me discounts, in exchange for being able to more closely tailor their business practices to demand. If I am unhappy with this, I may withdraw from the scheme, forgo the discounts, and under the Data Protection Act demand that my information be removed from processing. It is my personal belief that no significant harm can befall me because Sainsbury’s know how much salsa I buy, therefore I accept the cards because I get free video rentals.

The proposed ID cards, by contrast, institute a national database of my name, address, fingerprint, iris pattern, state “entitlements” (lawks, I’m blessed) and a whole lot more, and embody it in one piece of plastic which I am then obliged to produce at the convenience of the police, in order to prove that I am not “up to no good”, as Blunkett himself puts it. If it is my personal belief that I am not a criminal, and therefore do not need to be fingerprinted, tracked, and carry an ID card to prove as much, I am fucked, because to not do so would make me a criminal. How convenient.

I therefore reason as follows, and I’ll make this very plain because you clearly missed it:

1. If Blunkett contends that ID cards involve less sensitive data than supermarket cards, he is a fucking liar.
2. If you believe him, you are stupid.
3. If you believe that the difference in voluntary and non-voluntary is trivial, see 2.
4. Therefore, Blunkett’s assertion that to accept supermarket cards is to accept ID cards is fucking stupid.

Is this clearer now? The point, should it continue to elude you, is that people do not make an “unjustified assumption” about what the supermarkets do. What they do is very clearly laid out in the T&Cs, and one can reject it as one feels appropriate. None of this is true of the national ID cards, and you don’t even get 50p off baked beans. If Mr. Blunkett feels the public is too stupid to discern the difference in scope and implication between supermarket cards and ID cards, perhaps he would be better suited back as Education Secretary.