Internal Passports

At 7:30 AM 8/1/96, Lucky Green wrote:
>At 11:12 7/31/96, Duncan Frissell wrote:

>>Most Central European countries have both privacy commissioners and legal
>>requirements that everyone register their addresses with the police.  I'll
>>do without the former if I can also avoid the latter.
>
>I remember a time when Privacy Commissioners were a new thing. Their
>primary purpose seemed to be to sanction government access to (and keeping
>of) large databases on the activities of the population. Their secondary
>purpose was to prevent the private sector competition from doing the same.
>Eliminating access to such data by the individual in the process.

I'm with Duncan and Lucky on this one. Nations with a "Privacy Ombudsman"
are almost always nations with extensive files on individuals, their
habits, and their political activities.

Having a "Privacy Ombudsman" is a bone thrown to the proles. I suspect a
police state like Singapore has such a person.

And related to the "photo I.D." discussion, most of these nations demand
that passports be left at hotel desks when checking in. (At least they did
when I spent 6 weeks travelling through Europe in 1983.) Perhaps the theory
is that this stops people from running out on their bills, though credit
cards do the same thing (*). However, the police reportedly inspect these
passports and enter them into data bases to track movements.

(* As the credit card companies increase their cooperation with law
enforcement, a la the links between FinCEN and the Big Three credit
reporters,  the passports will no longer be necessary, and the process of
tracking movements can be done just with the credit cards. Those without
credit cards...well, they'll think of something.)

Question (a la "Wired"): "When will the United States introduce an internal
passport?"

May: "2005, but they won't call it that."


--Tim May

Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software!
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
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"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

Timothy C. May wrote:
Tim wrote:
> I'm with Duncan and Lucky on this one. Nations with a "Privacy Ombudsman"
> are almost always nations with extensive files on individuals, their
> habits, and their political activities.

That reminds me:  I thumbed through BiBi's terrorism book (the one D.S.
certified as prerequisite reading for particpation in intelligent
discussions about something-or-other) at B&N the other day.  It's a
pretty thin book.  Most of it seems to be about the rise of the Moslem
Menace and how the Sultan's hordes will soon be upon us all.  The last
chapter outlines all the "necessary measures" governments must take
to stamp out the wildfire of terrorism.  Same old same old, mostly,
like allowing suspects to be held without charges, allowing warrantless
searches (I think), thorough weapon registration, and so on.  The last
one (or next-to-last; I think the last one is "brainwash the populace
into thinking this is all a good idea") is about establishing a 
periodic "civil liberties review panel".

Yeah right.


______c_____________________________________________________________________
Mike M Nally * Tiv^H^H^H IBM * Austin TX    * For the time being,
       m5@tivoli.com * m101@io.com          *    
      <URL:http://www.io.com/~m101>         *    three heads and eight arms.

Timothy C. May wrote:
> 
> Having a "Privacy Ombudsman" is a bone thrown to the proles. I suspect a
> police state like Singapore has such a person.
> 
> And related to the "photo I.D." discussion, most of these nations demand
> that passports be left at hotel desks when checking in. (At least they did
> when I spent 6 weeks travelling through Europe in 1983.) Perhaps the theory
> is that this stops people from running out on their bills, though credit
> cards do the same thing (*). However, the police reportedly inspect these
> passports and enter them into data bases to track movements.

Many still do.  Even ski hire shops in France require a passport, credit
card
or drivers licence to be _left_ with the shop (even hire car companies
don't
do this! - I suppose they've figured out you need your driving licence
...)

I was recently at a hotel in the Netherlands, and they required me to
fill
out a form asking for date and place of birth, passport number etc. etc.
I asked "What do you want this for?" and they replied "Oh, don't worry,
it's not for us, it's for the government"!!!  I look around me at the
dozen
or so people happily giving away these details, including my girlfriend
who later has to be given a lesson on misinformation ... (am I the only
one who fills out every form as Alexei Sayle with bad handwriting?)

Alexei
--
pub  1024/C001D00D 1996/01/22  Gary Howland <gary@systemics.com>
Key fingerprint =  0C FB 60 61 4D 3B 24 7D  1C 89 1D BE 1F EE 09 06 
^S
^A^Aoft FAT filesytem is extremely robust, ^Mrarely suffering from^T^T