Richard's Kingdom

Last Friday I travelled to London to see a talk by security visionary and cryptographer Bruce Schneier. The event was a fund-raiser for the Open Rights Group, and was chaired by its Executive Director, Jim Killock. His was not a demanding role. The capacity crowd of disciples, many of whom were also ORG supporters, needed [...]

The UK National Identity Card can be cloned and altered by IT security experts. Colour me unsurprised. The consultants who carried out this work are from the same community of experts who have been warning [pdf] that the cards would be cracked since the Home Office first disclosed the mechanics of the scheme. The alterations [...]

The Government is using passports to coerce you into surrendering control of your identity. Under the guise of improving passport security, the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) will begin forcing all new applicants to register with the ID cards database from April this year. This morning, IPS Chief executive James Hall was in full spin [...]

In November last year I wrote to James Hall, Chief Executive of the Identity and Passport Service, to follow up a discussion point from his live webchat on the Number 10 website. I wanted to find out more about the safeguards surrounding access to the National Identity Register (NIR) — the ‘big brother’ database of [...]

Today I took part in a live webchat with James Hall, chief executive of the Identity and Passport Service, hosted by the 10 Downing Street website. Among the many issues that were discussed, it was suggested that ID cards will bring us a step closer to a surveillance society. This was Mr. Hall’s response: “…it [...]