Technology Impacts

The days of being able to walk through airport security checkpoints while wearing shoes and a jacket could return if an experimental program proves successful, some Department of Homeland Security officials say.

Project officials hope various sensors, such as this one that tracks eye movement, can help security screeners.

The Homeland Security-funded project is Future Attribute Screening Technology, or FAST. Instead of focusing on whether you have hidden explosives or whether you’re carrying a weapon, sensors and cameras located at security checkpoints would measure the natural signals coming from your body — your heart rate, breathing, eye movement, body temperature and fidgeting.

Those physiological signs, measured together, will indicate whether you might have the desire or intent to do harm, project manager Robert Burns said.

“There’s been a large field of research that ties your physical reactions to your mental state, your emotional state. We’re looking for those signals that your body gives off naturally,” Burns said. Read the rest of this entry »

The Home Office is to spend over £500,000 this year on a marketing campaign for the identity card which features cartoon fingerprints

A departmental spokesperson told GC News that it is planning a public information campaign to alert businesses on the need to prepare for the introduction of the card, which will initially be made available on a voluntary basis.

It will be focused primarily on the north-west of England, reflecting plans to make the card available to residents of Greater Manchester later this year, with some nationwide marketing.

The campaign, one advert for which features a cartoon fingerprint unveiling the identity card to an admiring audience of other fingerprints, is expected to cost £544,000 between September and December.

“This will help businesses with ‘know your employee’ and ‘know your customer’ checks,” the spokesperson said. “The National Identity Card may be presented to businesses across the country any time after launch, as proof of identity. Businesses need to ensure that their staff are ready to recognise the National Identity Card, and know how to check the security features.” Read the rest of this entry »

The Daily Telegraph has a disturbing report about an alleged compulsory plan to insert RFID microchip transponders in all dogs in the UK, and Yet Another National Database of human names, addresses and telephone numbers, which will not solve the underlying problems, and which will pose a Privacy and Security risk to millions of innocent people.

All dogs to be microchipped with owner’s details to ‘help track pets’

All dogs in Britain will be fitted with microchips which contain their owner’s details, under cross party plans designed to track family pets.

By Andrew Hough
Published: 7:00AM BST 28 Sep 2009

Owners will be forced to install the microchip containing a barcode that can store their pet’s name, breed, age and health along with their own address and phone number.

barcode ? Surely not ! How exactly do you read one of those opticaly, when it is implanted under the skin and fur ?

Presumably the author means an implantable RFID transponder chip

This sort of glass encapsulated RFID transponder chip implant, designed for animal tagging, uses a low frequency of around 125KHz, with a reading range of about a metre. High or microwave frequency, faster data rate, longer range RFIDchips etc. are of no use for implants, as those radio frequencies are strongly absorbed by living tissue.

The barcode’s details would then be stored on a national database which local councils could access in a bid to easily identify an owner’s pet.

What is the justification for this being a national database ? Read the rest of this entry »

ID cards could be fitted with chip and pin technology to help combat identity fraud.

The head of the Government agency tasked with producing the cards said there were no “technical obstacles” to adding chips to the cards and handing out pin numbers.

James Hall, chief executive of the Identity and Passport Service said adding chips might allow the cards to be used in ATM machines in the future.

Officials are also looking at chip and pin as a possible way to help combat online fraud and help protect internet shoppers. Read the rest of this entry »

The trial of ID cards for airside workers at City of London and Manchester airports will be a slightly slower process than we imagined.

The cards will only be mandatory for new staff, not for all pilots and staff working at the airports.

The Home Office reckon this was always the case and we remembered wrongly - we bow to their semantics and long memories.

The answer was prized out of immigration minister Phil Woolas in a Written Answer. Read the rest of this entry »

Westminster speculation has raised a new question mark over the future of the government’s flagship identity card scheme, following news of the forthcoming departure of home secretary Jacqui Smith.

Smith was one of the main driving forces behind the ID card policy, fighting off Treasury concerns about cost and rejecting a Treasury-led proposal for a private-sector-led ID system.

But she has been badly tarnished by the row over her husband’s claim for renting a porn video on her expenses and her designation of her main home as a room in her sister’s London house. She is expected to leave the Cabinet in Gordon Brown’s expected reshuffle next week. Read the rest of this entry »

AN extract of a documentary movie entitled ‘taking liberties’ on freedom showing what could happen with the introduction of ID cards

New rules requiring passports or new high-tech documents to cross the United States‘ northern and southern borders take effect today, as some rue the tightening of security and others hail it as long overdue.

The rules are being implemented nearly eight years after the Sept. 11 attacks and long after the 9/11 Commission recommended the changes.

They were delayed by complaints from state officials who worried the restrictions would hinder the flow of people and commerce and affect border towns dependent on international crossings.

In 2001, a driver’s license and an oral declaration of citizenship were enough to cross the Canadian and Mexican borders; Monday’s changes are the last step in a gradual ratcheting up of the rules. Now thousands of Americans are preparing by applying for passports or obtaining special driver’s licenses that also can be used to cross the border. Read the rest of this entry »

Council leaders in Sheffield said they will not allow the city to take part in trials of the Government’s identity card system after Manchester signed up for a pilot project.
Sheffield Council leaders will place a motion before the council next week proposing the city rule itself out of any future project to test the cards.

Liberal Democrat leader Coun Paul Scriven said the announcement that Manchester would take part in a trial beginning in the autumn should not prompt Sheffield to follow suit. Read the rest of this entry »

The government issued a little-reported document this month on ID cards. It was quietly published when the home secretary Jacqui Smith announced that some volunteer members of the public in Greater Manchester would be the first to receive ID cards in November.

These are 10 things from the document, ?Identity Cards Act Secondary Legislation - An Impact Assessment?, which might not be generally known:

1. The ID Cards Act 2006 imposes on citizens a duty to update information held on them on the National Identity Register (NIR). Cardholders can receive civil penalty fines if they fail to update information held about them on the NIR or notify the Identity and Passport Service if their card is lost or stolen. Citizens may also be in breach of legislation if they fail to notify a change of address within three months. It is open to the government to charge a fee for updating the register. Read the rest of this entry »