The BBC is reporting the release of a new privacy report by the Royal Academy of Engineering.
The line Tony Blair and other technocrats should take on board is:
No technology is 100% perfect, and no engineer will tell you that any technology is 100% perfect
Another interesting idea is that the biometric data in new passports could be used to trigger targeted attacks. Since these passports use RFID for contactless reading, they are vulnerable to being read at a distance as has been demonstrated many times now.
This could be used to detonated a bomb when particular people are near it, or when people from a particular country are nearby.
The more data held on passports, or ID cards makes this sort of targeting easier, it also makes tracking of people far easier. Either by government services or by criminals or even private detectives (although such methods may be illegal, that will not stop people).
Privacy and identity have taken on a new importance recently. It used to be understood that the state and others would not pry into your private life, but today the state is seeking more control over our identities (and therefore our lives) and to reduce our privacy. We leave much more information about ourselves and our actions behind, although it is currently difficult to link all this together, new technology is being deployed to make the task of linking up our data and discovering habits and movements much much easier.
This may be of benefit to the state and its organs, but the benefit to individuals is at best hazy, at worst there is a large negative impact.
Liberalism needs to start taking these threats seriously and developing a response to such power grabs by the state. We need to articulate a vision of individual rights and responsibilities only regulated by the state to prevent harm to others to combat the vision of the ‘beneficial state’ which attempts to solve all our problems through technocratic measures and decreased individual freedom.
