On 20/08/07, Nadav Har'El <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > far less opposed to giving the police more search power. It doesn't make > us a > totalitarian state, unless the police actually (ab)uses this power, and so > far, I don't think that it actually does.
There is also the issue of having all the information about you concentrated in one place, open for corrupt officials to give/sell away to anyone who wants to know this stuff about you. It's already mostly there with the Identification Number being a single "join" field on everything written about you - from your birth certificate through your school marks, your army records, your rental agreements, bank records, national insurance, any club membership your have etc. etc. As far as I followed the article, the new law is just going to make it even easier to track you. BTW - all this cryptography and stenography stuff is not the point - I suppose none of us in this forum are criminals that have anything to hide. But as law abiding citizens we are now even more exposed to criminals having more information about us - e.g. someone who gathers enough information about you can start pretending to be you and get credit cards on your name, or know that you are away from home for a period and break into it, knowing exactly what to look for because they also found your credit card or warranty records, etc. --Amos
