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Whoa: British SmartCard rollout


   >   From: bill payne <[email protected]>
   >   To: [email protected]
   >   CC: federico pena <" Federico.F.Pena"@hq.doe.gov>, [email protected],
   >           john gilmore <[email protected]>, j orlin grabbe <[email protected]>,
   >           [email protected]
   >   Subject: Jim Omura

   >   <B><A HREF="http://www.jya.com/cn010598.txt">cn010598.txt</A>
       Electronic Surveillance News                      January 5, 1998</B>

2 January 1998, Newsbytes:

 British Govt Announces Smart Card Plans for UK Citizens 

 London, England: Amid the quiet of the Christmas and New Year break, the British 
 government revealed plans for a "citizen's smart card" that will streamline the 
 interfacing of British people with their government. 

 In plain English, that translates to a smart card that can be used to allow people to
 pay all of their taxes, including income tax, national insurance, and local taxes, as
 well as apply for passports, state benefits, and other forms of government welfare.

 The idea behind the smart card, according to Peter Kilfoyle, the British public
 services minister, is that people will be able to use the card to identify themselves
 to the various government computers, all of which will be interlinked with each
 other. 

 Kilfoyle claims that there are "huge potential savings" to be had from the
 introduction of the smart card, although he revealed that possessing a card will be
 voluntary. When questioned further on this, he admitted, however, that people
 could find it difficult to operate in the future without such a card. 

Initially, the citizen's smart card will rely on traditional PIN protection systems to
 allow a person to ID themselves alongside the card to the government computer
 systems. In the longer term, and certainly within the next five years, the plan is to
 allow an individual to use a fingerprint or similar biometric system for positive
 identification. 

----

Fingerprinting everyone on the planet: those of you in CA and a handful
of other states have already been fingerprinted "so you can drive".

Police will eventually be able to stop anyone and demand to check
their fingerprints via cheap small portable scanners.

EFF/EPIC etc need to specifically target these biometric systems
as being way over the top.

Totally unnecessary.
---guy

   How did you CA cypherpunks feel about being fingerprinted?