I dunno. Losing two discs is hardly comparable to cash-for-questions, or for the hilarious misjudgement of ‘back to basics’. Nor with the perpetual infighting over Europe which Major never dealt with. (Yes, there’s rebellious Labour backbenchers, but they’re kind of expected to be, especially by those not left-leaning themselves.)
Well, that shit is moronic anyway. I don’t understand why banks ask for “security information” that is a matter of public record. Someone could find out my mother’s maiden name in no time if they bothered to look; what’s secure about that? So as far as any banking institution is concerned, my mother’s maiden name is “Fred” (well, something similar).
As for ID cards, I get the impression Brown isn’t entirely sold on them anyway, having as he does a rather better grasp of the costs involved than Blair ever did (or bothered to obtain). He’d already instigated one of his beloved “reviews” of them, but regardless of which way that goes, he would likely feel he needs to wait for a respectful amount of time before dismantling such a major pillar of Blair’s policies. Watch this space for postponements pending studies on the technology and security, public consultations, limited deployment for brown people wot took our jobs, etc. and so forth.
They’ve found it! 
I presume that’s what Malacandra was linking to above, but of course it now links to ‘Item removed’…
I just hired a DVD for a romantic night in with the wife, but when I put it on instead of Julia Roberts all I got was this long list of names and addresses and National Insurance numbers. What the hell am I going to do with this? 
It’s rather sweet how the Daily Asylum Seeker has a little paragraph all about how these new-fangled CD things work.
Settle for a nice night out with Alasdair Darling instead? :eek: Nah, perhaps not.
Another proof that small online merchants are more trustworthy than governments. The same governments that instruct people to be weary of small online merchants. :rolleyes:
So does Balls ever have a cock-up?
Keep your pecker up!
(I’ve always wanted to say that!)
It’s the government I’m weary of, after all this time. 
Laptops are regularly stolen from service station car parks, and its usually sensitive stuff, from documents marked secret, to police intelligence records, to NHS records, even medical records involving the Royal family.
This will continue, people in general do not have any clue about IT security, because they are not IT specialists- their job is to use IT for their work as a tool not to consider policies and risks.
When they put in a system that is secure, you find that the users can’t get it to work for them, they forget passwords, they delete important data and cant get it back, all manner of careless things.
The current project to link all the courts, to prisons and probation services is called C-NOMIS. They have spent £150 millions, and its estimated that to get it into any sembance of working order will cost over £900 million, and when you look at the cost overruns of big government IT projects, there is no reason to expect that figure to come in at less than £2 billions and every reason to believe it could exceed £4 billions.
This is a system that affects maybe 500 thousand to one million people, this system was the reason behind the merger of the DCA, Prison Service and Probation Service, at absolutely incredible expense, but it is already acknowledged that the system will never work as intended.
This may not seem relevant, except that the national ID card system will in effect be a multilevel multiuser access system across many government agencies, such as police, tax, benefits agencies, even wether the holder is entitled to health services and so many others.
It will record data on 70 million Britons, and probably many millions of undesirables from other countries too, I have little doubt that US agencies will want access too - since they already demand access to British credit records.
Think of the number of users this system will have, how it will be extended to incude other functions and then try to imagine that every one of those users will be diligent and hard working, that not one of them will be corrupt and not one of them will make an error, that not one of them feels they are underpaid, that none of them will be sympathetic to criminals of some terrorist group.
Think of the possiblities for fraud, for selling on forged identities and for state abuse of the rights of the individual.
This thread is about two lousy discs, and the agency concerned managed to screw that up, just multiply that by a factor of several thousand - that’s the UK national ID card system for you.
Oh, and here are you obligatory links,
If you look at the last link and see what data will be stored about each person holding a national ID card, its obvious that this data will be needed for UK citizens to access services, its also obvious that this data will be linked with other data that will be commercially useful, and finally, its obvious that if this data were compromised, as it certainly will be, the id card will be no use in tracking down terrorists and it will cause individuals a huge amount of grief trying to get it corrected.
In just six months the etimated cost of the ID card system rose by £840 millions, we were assured that the cost would be *** ONLY*** £3 billions and now its gone up to £5.75 billions, whats the bet it will go well over £10 billions then ?
According to the London School of Economics it could go to £19 billions.
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2138846/id-card-biometrics-lse
If it were true that National ID cards could significantly impact on fraud, crime, migrant working and the other obvious issues, then it might be worth the cost,you you just know that our government is congenitally incapable of specifying a useful system, that they will end up underfunding it and asking more of it than is possible, that stff will be incompetant boobs and above all, not any of them are trustworthy enough to ensure the integrity of the data.
Maybe it would be better to spend the money on law enforcment and prisons, you can do a lot for both with that kind of money.