SUBSIM Radio Room Forums - View Single Post - Britain's frantic rush towards a fully fledged surveillance society

TarJak · 11-22-06, 02:53 AM

This is being dredged up in Australia again. In the 80's there was a fair amount of debate about the proposed Australia Card. Ultimately it was too hot a political potato for either party to handle and it got sunk.

The question I have is given the amount of information the govenrment already has about you and your activities, is adding the card really going to make much more difference? I'm not sure that the UK laws are like on Privacy, but there have been a number of prosecutions of civil servants who have misused their access to personal database and even in corporations there are fairly stringent privacy controls in place.

I'm not an apologist for adding the cards and to be honest I don't really like the idea of having them introduced so that they link up all your government data, if only because of the damage a lost/stolen/forged card could do to an individual.

ID theft we are told is a groing problem adding a card that gives the bearer access to all your personal details isn't really going to help control that threat and if anything increases the risk that incidences of identity theft will rise even more.

11-22-06, 02:53 AM	#44
TarJak Fleet Admiral Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Sydney, Australia Posts: 17,052 Downloads: 150 Uploads: 8	This is being dredged up in Australia again. In the 80's there was a fair amount of debate about the proposed Australia Card. Ultimately it was too hot a political potato for either party to handle and it got sunk. The question I have is given the amount of information the govenrment already has about you and your activities, is adding the card really going to make much more difference? I'm not sure that the UK laws are like on Privacy, but there have been a number of prosecutions of civil servants who have misused their access to personal database and even in corporations there are fairly stringent privacy controls in place. I'm not an apologist for adding the cards and to be honest I don't really like the idea of having them introduced so that they link up all your government data, if only because of the damage a lost/stolen/forged card could do to an individual. ID theft we are told is a groing problem adding a card that gives the bearer access to all your personal details isn't really going to help control that threat and if anything increases the risk that incidences of identity theft will rise even more.