Sounds too good to be true? Well, it's a little more complicated than going down to PC World, but a genuine DTI tax break nonetheless.
Patrick Collinson's article Screen savers in the Guardian on Saturday explains the scheme. Essentially, it's a way for your employer to bulk-buy PCs and lease them to you via your pay packet over 3 years - saving you 33% in (basic rate) tax & NI. After a notional £50 payoff at the end of the lease period, the kit is yours - free and clear. Your employer even gets to claim back the VAT!
Send your boss on over to the DTI website and start picking out your dream machine...
Well, that passed without much fanfare!
Given the amount of kerfuffle that Compuserve and Unisys caused back in the mid-90s when they started asking people to license what was, by then, one of the most popular file formats in IP-space, and the current frenzy surrounding Software Patents in Europe [petition here] and EFF's current efforts to bust illegitimate US patent applications I thought I might have seen a little more interest in the worldwide expiry of the Unisys LZW patent.
If anyone is interested, The GIF Controversy: A Software Developer's Perspective provides a detailed history. I guess that this really only affects developers since Unisys was forced to back off its initial claims re. GIF data files, so I'm glad to see that some in the Open Source fraternity have taken note.
P2PQ is an example of the sort of thing that I imagine Tim O'Reilly means by "embedding people in applications". It's an attempt to build a human-powered P2P 'search engine' - a sort of Wikipedia / old-school Napster / ICQ hybrid, if you like.
Of course there are plenty of (mainly) special interest, expert- and community-based based advice networks out there. What P2PQ seems to be attempting is to bring this to a general audience - and, if their plan is to be bought out by Google* at some point (a la Orkut), then they may well be on to something!
P2PQ 'web' in its current form actually looks to me more like a toolbar app that could be rolled out to an exisiting community, or a feature that could be added to one of the plethora of social networks - but it seems unlikely to achieve the critical mass required to make it a humanly useful tool if propagated along current lines. The problem they face is deep and possibly insurmountable - how to motivate people to provide quality answers to questions from strangers?
[I note with interest that there is a P2PQ 'Business Edition' that adds features to make it into a 'knowledge aggregator' - a smart way to bring in maintenance & development funding in the short term, and a good fallback position ("it's a dynamic meta-FAQ tool") if P2PQ 'web' doesn't take off or become self-supporting...]
I'm interested in the approach, though, because it attempts to find a use for P2P beyond the massively predominant file sharing. I feel there are *significant* benefits to be had from sharing, but am personally more interested in creating new types or categories of 'files' to be shared - aside from linear audio & video, or chunks of executeable code (i.e. 'warez') - than modes / networks / platforms for sharing.
Knowledge is one such category - so I wish P2PQ well, even if I'm unconvinced by the growth & motivation models implied by their website - and so, I would say, are mood/emotions and quality of life decisions. Finding ways to harness genuine self-interest is one key, I believe, to building long-lasting, useful and ubiquitous 'human applications', and may actually provide a serious - and more trustworthy! - alternative to market-driven (i.e. "show us the money") proprietary or Open Source approaches.
*Another sign that Google = the new Microsoft? Hotmail's acquisition by Microsoft in '98 dramatically illustrated that the 'trade sale' could be (almost) as lucrative as the IPO, if you've got your technology right and enough of a jump on the big boys. I certainly get the feeling that these days, people are setting up companies with the intended 'liquid exit' being acquisition by Google. Be interesting to see how this works out post-Google's IPO...
Tim O'Reilly's much-honed The Open Source Paradigm Shift is an insightful articulation of the challenges that face not only Open Source and Free Software, but also proprietary sofware, in a world characterised by three key trends - Commoditisation, Collaboration and 'Customizability' (software-as-service).
He starts with the premise:
...that free and open source developers are in much the same position today that IBM was in 1981 when it changed the rules of the computer industry, but failed to understand the consequences of the change, allowing others to reap the benefits.
And then takes the reader on a whirlwind tour that includes the birth of Unix, the Internet, Usenet and the Web - as well as the latterday phenomena of Google, Amazon and eBay. Tim argues that to understand the future of Linux, for example, we should look to the history and development of the Internet, which has to an extent demonstrated "the nature of competitive advantage in the new paradigm".
He offers a particularly graphic example:
"How many of you use Linux?" I ask. Depending on the venue, 20-80% of the audience might raise its hands. "How many of you use Google?" Every hand in the room goes up. And the light begins to dawn. Every one of them uses Google's massive complex of 100,000 Linux servers, but they were blinded to the answer by a mindset in which "the software you use" is defined as the software running on the computer in front of you.Most of the "killer apps" of the Internet, applications used by hundreds of millions of people, run on Linux or FreeBSD. But the operating system, as formerly defined, is to these applications only a component of a larger system. Their true platform is the Internet.
A sometimes thought-provoking ("applications with people hidden inside them"?!) call to action, neatly balanced between the extremes of Open Source and proprietary approaches, from a man who - more than most - is in a position to know.
[Well worth following some of the links, too!]
John Lettice in El Reg's, MS, open source, The Facts and the fit-ups, describes (or more accurately, rips apart) one of Microsoft's recent series of UK seminars intended "to help customers better understand the debate surrounding Microsoft and Open Source software".
The spirit of "openness and honesty" (not) demonstrated by Microsoft seems vaguely reminiscent of... current Home Office behaviour. Simplistic arguments, 'evidence' skewed in your own favour and spin up the wazoo!
Microsoft's re-telling of the Newham incident shows a degree of selectivity with the truth that must have even Blunkett reeling in admiration. Buy your way into a contract and then say that you 'won' it on the long term value (TCO) of your product? Pull the other one...
El Reg were able to infiltrate various people into the event(s), so they can at least report on precisely who said what. A boon completely denied to us, the citizens of the UK, despite Home Office protestations that they are 'engaging' with the public in an open consultation process - while, behind closed doors, the industry briefings carry on regardless.
Steven Mathieson's article in the Guardian, Knowing me, knowing you, is another of his well-informed pieces on government IT policy. He quotes David Cameron (Conservative MP) who refers to the Govenment's "excuse culture": they've got a whole bunch of problems - such as illegal immigration, serious crime, terrorism - but no real answers, so they offer a National Identity Register-backed ID card scheme as a "cure-all".
When a 'new' controversy arrives in the media (e.g. the Bichard report, regarding the intelligence failures that contributed to the Soham murders) you can bet your bottom dollar that the Home Secretary or Home Office will try to 'work in' a role for ID cards or the NIR - leading to massive 'feature creep' before the things are even implemented, and even more worrying erosions of personal privacy and the presumption of innocence. For example, it is now proposed that allegations be attached to people's records (i.e. stuff that may not even have taken place, let alone been committed by the individual) and that ID cards should in some way be linked to the Criminal Records Bureau.
Are we all, therefore, to be tarred with the same brush as the paedophiles and serious criminals? And do you *really* think that little plastic cards are going to prove a serious impediment to these people?
One of the more worrying aspects of all this is the sheer number of current and upcoming public (and private) sector initiatives designed to track us and our behaviour. Thanks to Steven for the following list:
Citizen Information Project: National Statistics plans a population register of everyone in the UK, providing one place to update details and improving government statistics.National Identity Register: to be built from scratch for the ID card scheme. To include every UK adult, subject to parliamentary vote, it will include reference numbers for databases such as national insurance and NHS numbers, and biometric measurements.
NHS Care Records Service: the national project has started building a patient database to contain summary medical records for all in England.
Coordinated Online Register of Electors: plans are to merge or link the electoral rolls managed by all UK local authorities.
Local databases of all children in England are being trialled.
The Department for Transport will produce a feasibility study on installing tracking devices in all vehicles this summer, allowing road pricing.
Private sector databases include credit reference agencies, loyalty cards and bank databases of card data.
If they are so interested in knowing me and knowing you, why is it they are not so keen on us knowing what they are doing... and why?!
Joel on Software's How Microsoft Lost the API War argues that the Windows API has "a terminal disease" while Cory Doctorow tries to convince Microsoft Research that DRM systems don't work, are bad for society / business / artists and that "DRM is a bad business-move for MSFT"!
Now I'm no Windows developer, although I did have some experience of developing for a Microsoft 'architecture' (early MSN) in the mid-90s - and, boy, was that fun when, e.g. they updated the component mix less than 48 hours from launch deadline. So I can well believe Joel's assertion that:
Outside developers, who were never particularly happy with the complexity of Windows development, have defected from the Microsoft platform en-masse and are now developing for the web.
en-masse? Definitely some. Probably quite a lot, in fact. But surely not most (existing Windows developers, that is)? M$ is still the largest game in town, and will be - by Joel's own admission - for quite some time to come. Although his later wage comparisons do give an indication that certain skills are now paying a rarity premium.
What's more compelling is his argument that:
...you've got the Windows API, you've got VB, and now you've got .NET, in several language flavors, and don't get too attached to any of that, because we're making Avalon, you see, which will only run on the newest Microsoft operating system, which nobody will have for a loooong time. And personally I still haven't had time to learn .NET very deeply, and we haven't ported Fog Creek's two applications from classic ASP and Visual Basic 6.0 to .NET because there's no return on investment for us. None.
The cracks are beginning to show, especially if this is true:
The big meme at Microsoft these days is: "Microsoft is betting the company on the rich client."
A bet they can't afford to lose, but the only bet they know how to make!
Cory, on the other hand, ends his talk with a startling request...
You know what I would totally buy? A record player that let me play everybody's records. Right now, the closest I can come to that is an open source app called VLC, but it's clunky and buggy and it didn't come pre-installed on my computer.Sony didn't make a Betamax that only played the movies that Hollywood was willing to permit -- Hollywood asked them to do it, they proposed an early, analog broadcast flag that VCRs could hunt for and respond to by disabling recording. Sony ignored them and made the product they thought their customers wanted.
I'm a Microsoft customer. Like millions of other Microsoft customers, I want a player that plays anything I throw at it, and I think that you are just the company to give it to me.
Yes, this would violate copyright law as it stands, but Microsoft has been making tools of piracy that change copyright law for decades now. Outlook, Exchange and MSN are tools that abet widescale digital infringement.
More significantly, IIS and your caching proxies all make and serve copies of documents without their authors' consent, something that, if it is legal today, is only legal because companies like Microsoft went ahead and did it and dared lawmakers to prosecute.
Microsoft stood up for its customers and for progress, and won so decisively that most people never even realized that there was a fight.
Do it again! This is a company that looks the world's roughest, toughest anti-trust regulators in the eye and laughs. Compared to anti-trust people, copyright lawmakers are pantywaists. You can take them with your arm behind your back.
...and Bill Gates' worst fear: "Because if you don't do it, someone else will."
Now that the initial furore has died down a bit and the price of invites has crashed, SecurityFocus' Mark Rasch (scary photo, Mark!) writes a well-argued piece on The Trouble with Gmail. Just in case you're thinking he's another paranoid nutcase or rabid civil libertarian take note of the fact that he's *actually* a former head of the Justice Department's computer crime unit...
"Even though the configuration of the Gmail service minimizes the intrusion into privacy, it represents a disturbing conceptual paradigm - the idea that computer analysis of communications is not a search. This is a dangerous legal precedent which both law enforcement and intelligence agencies will undoubtedly seize upon and extend, to the detriment of our privacy."
Maybe the (conceptual) horse has already bolted - it certainly seems that the competition thinks so, as they fall over themselves to up the storage capacities of their e-mail accounts. Some more successfully than others, of course :)
What interests me in all this, however, is the fact that to many people - especially those who couldn't give a monkeys about PCs - e-mail is the internet, and by giving someone the capacity to store, manage, search, etc. ALL of their digital communications and relationships these companies are effectively now doling out potentially lifelong digital identities.
Did this (potential) add value beyond the mere scarcity of the first Gmail accounts - who knows (what price phil@gmail.com)?
Is it going to create / enable / invite a whole new raft of derivative services - probably (consider Pop Goes the Gmail just for starters)!
Is this the beginning of a shift from Personal Computing to Personal Information (Personal Servers, Mobile Gateways, convergence through synch, etc.)?
You decide.
UPDATED 21/6/04: Irdial Discs points to another couple of Gmail 'tools': Gmail Loader, which allows you to upload existing mail archives to Gmail (to utilise its search facilities); and a rather bizarre Gmail giveaway site, who seem rather proud to have accumulated over 44 million page views but who carry no ads...
Glad I made it to NotCon (delayed somewhat by my trip from Cornwall and a distinct lack of Circle & District line) yesterday and very grateful to Lionel for letting me 'borrow' his badge so I could actually make it in to some of the afternoon sessions at what was a very well attended, even oversubscribed, event.
One of the highlights of the day was the official launch of TheyWorkForYou.com - now in beta test. I'll let them describe the site / service in their own words:
"Everything MPs say in the House of Commons is recorded in a document called Hansard.TheyWorkForYou.com helps make sense of this vital democratic resource and, crucially, allows you to add your own comments and links to the official transcripts of Parliament."
There are some extremely cool features, including RSS feeds of each MP's statements in Parliament and the fact that the parser and DB driving the site are Open Sourced. Tom Loosemore was actively encouraging people to build their own versions and tools - let the games commence!
I was reminded of the time I met one of the Hansard chaps - at a DTI PAT18 'consultation' in the late 90s - and suggested that BBC Parliament (I was working for the Beeb at the time) and Hansard could get together on the web & digital TV and turn British politics into American football... or a bloodsport! That particular idea was never going to happen, of course, but its great to see that the public will finally be getting access to the sort of resource that the all-too-powerful(?) lobbying groups have been using for years.
Many congratulations and much kudos to the whole team :)
Now if only some of the 'higher-ups' would remember that they are, in fact, Public Servants not our masters...
John Leyden's report Accenture wins $10bn Homeland Security gig ends with some interesting facts that may well start to hit home later this year:
Since January, visitors to the US from many countries have been fingerprinted or photographed. Under the US Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002, countries whose citizens enjoy visa-free travel to the United States must issue passports with biometric identifiers no later than 26 October 2004.
Hmm - might this explain the Home Office's sudden hurry to get biometrics 'working' on UK passports?
Its bad enough that the European Union Commission have (ignoring the votes of the European Parliament!) signed an agreement with the US about the transfer of airline Passenger Name Record data - see Spy Blog and The Practical Nomad for detailed commentary and analysis - but for the US to foist biometrics on us all (even us supposed allies!) as a consequence / requirement of its own shaky 'Homeland Security' agenda?
Seems like the global bully-boy is revealing its own deep-seated insecurities, making threats (we'll fingerprint your citizens) and demands (spend billions on biometric technology - which US firms can supply, of course!) of those it knows will fall into line - with little to no chance of getting the *really* bad boys to comply...
UPDATED 10/6/04: Oops! It looks like an important Congressional committee has voted to strip Accenture (plus Dell, AT&T, Sprint and Raytheon) of their lucrative contract, "because Accenture is a foreign company that uses Bermuda as a tax haven."
As recently noted by The Register, this Sunday is NotCon '04.
If, like me, you've been keeping an eye on this event as it evolved you may be gratified to see what a fine line-up the organisers have arranged. In their own words:
BREWSTER KAHLE, board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and founder of astonishing informational resource the Internet Archive, will be joining an equally mind-boggling lineup of speakers at the UK's first NotCon event, a one-day conference intended as some sort of answer to all those cutting-edge technological get-togethers they're always having in the USA.Also speaking at the event will be top names from the UK's IT community and beyond, from IAN CLARKE (architect of the anonymous peer-to-peer network Freenet) to science fiction author and Creative Commons activist CORY DOCTOROW. The day will also mark the official unveiling of the latest grass-roots "e-democracy" project from the people behind acclaimed political involvement sites FAXYOURMP.COM and PUBLICWHIP.ORG.UK.
And that's on top of some practical (and some slightly less practical) demonstrations of social software, MP3 remixing, a debate on how weblogs can actually make a difference in the real world, a beginner's guide to "urban exploration", and how to tell the time using only a prawn sandwich and an old BBC Micro. Plus of course wireless internet access, and a bar, and the kind of people who actually ask for them in that order.
At only £4 per head (£3 concessions, including webloggers) on the door, I really don't know what's stopping you coming to Imperial College Union, Beit Quad, Prince Consort Road, South Kensington, London SW7 2BB this Sunday June 6th, from 11am to 7pm. I'll be trekking all the way up from Cornwall - Happy Birthday, Fi! - to catch what I can.
See (some of) you there :)
The Cabinet Office announced yesterday that Ian Watmore, currently UK managing director of Accenture (formerly Andersen Consulting), will be the new head of e-government. This is, of course, after the Office of the e-Envoy is transformed into the e-Government Unit - with an attendant shift in emphasis and responsibilities [scroll down linked page]. No surprise at all to come across this, then:
"As part of this digital security infrastructure we envision that every constituent will have a highly secured, multi-purpose, government-provided electronic ID card that will serve not only for government purposes but also for online activities in the private sector - the electronic equivalent of today's ID cards [?!], passports, driver's licenses and social security cards." - p5, Accenture’s Technology Vision for Government [726 KB PDF file] (thanks, Charles)
Interesting also to note that on the same day Microsoft "also revealed it has been working with consultancy firm Accenture to offer customisable sets of software, strategies and best practices tailored to the needs of public-sector organisations".
No conspiracy, of course - just an entirely too cosy relationship between big tech, the mega-consultancies and government. It's the same old familiar names that to date have cost the British taxpayer billions in failed public-sector IT projects, and yet they just keep coming back for more...
Oh, and one final thing - over in the States it seems that Accenture are in the final running (1 of 3 companies) to be awarded the contract for George W.'s $10bn computer dragnet - unparalleled surveillance of foreigners (that's us folks!) that even the US General Accounting Office "has castigated as 'very risky', [warning] of significant management and oversight problems."
Let's just hope it's beyond them.
UPDATED 7/6/04: Martin Brampton as Devil's Advocate on Silicon.com asks Who wants government run like a business? He questions Tony Blair's claims both that Ian Watmore will play a "pivotal role ensuring that IT supports the business transformation of government" and that this will necessarily lead to "better, more efficient, public services".
Thanks to SpyBlog for (my) first heads-up on yesterday's announcement of PA Consulting being awarded the ID Card scheme "Development Partner" contract by UK Home Office, also covered by The Register, BBC News, Silicon.com and others.
Any and all of the above are more informative the less-than-forthcoming Home Office Press Release, repeated on PA Consulting's site.
The runner up - Deloitte - must be upset, especially as they were still in the running last week when The Scotsman revealed in its article, Advice on ID cards came from firm 'set to make millions', that the company had seconded one of its staff to work at the Home Office advising on the planned ID card network from September until March...
But, as John Lettice kindly pointed out to me, this is not so much about Deloitte trying to pull a fast one as the fact that "uk.gov is so addicted to getting free help from the industry that there is no way it can make a measured purchase decision about anything". Secondments are apparently common practice in UK government IT, and PA Consulting themselves have in the past 'lent' members of staff to, e.g. the eEnvoy's department.
All the big players do it, so is there any wonder that the government often displays such wild enthusiasm for 'magic bullet' IT solutions? Or that the smartcard agenda is so deeply embedded in government thinking that, ID cards or not, we are ploughing ahead with a 'chipped' future with scant regard for the long term social or financial consequences?
I'll leave you with a quote from an article written back in 2000 by the Home Office's new 'Development Partner':
"Integrating customer access is a radical proposition, but as a focus for effort it offers the promise of being one of the single most visible and effective initiatives in improving public services yet undertaken by this Government, and possibly any other since the Second World War. And it could be rolled out in the lifetime of a single Parliament. All this, and it would actually save public money. If New Labour is serious about empowering the customer of public services and of adopting radical measures to get more from less, then focusing on customer access is one of the answers." - PA Consulting Group, 'E-nable the customer to join-up government'
No agendas there, then!
UPDATED 25/5/04: a timely reminder by Philip Johnston in the Telegraph of PA Consulting's shaky track record re. the 'shambolic' start of the Criminal Records Bureau in 2002. Remember when a whole pile of kids couldn't go back to school after the summer hols because their new teachers hadn't been police checked? Thank you, PA! And (for the record) Capita, too.
Thanks to Irdial for clarifying the proposed use of a centralised database in his scheme, now christened ISLAND: "The centralized database of photographs held by the passport office is there only to do duplicate application checks."
Setting aside the (not irrelevant) fact that I am specifically trying to counter the Home Office's current ID card proposals - that they seem very reluctant to broadcast (e.g. correctly naming the Draft Bill!) would require the creation of a National Identity Register containing multiple biometric records for each of us - and ISLAND is tackling the UKPS biometric passport scheme, I agree that an/each issuing authority must have some way in which to check that multiple ID documents are not issued to the same person.
I further agree that such a database might be inoffensive, "...as long as no one other than the passport office has access to it and it is used for this single purpose of dupechecking." In the case of ID cards and even the UKPS database (as Irdial later points out, regarding access by the Intelligence Services) this is unlikely to remain the case.
The problem is that the (inevitable) cost and creation of just one such database and its associated checking software seems to have provided irresitible temptation for the Government to contemplate and even start to legislate for feature creep on an unprecedented scale - i.e. allowing multiple agencies access to one big database (at least partially because it will spread the cost - now there's Gov't 'efficiency savings' for you, and it *only* comes at the price of compromising every citizen's right to privacy!) and furthermore letting them do all sorts of different types of cross-checks - maybe even speculative trawls, in the case/cause of anti-terrorism, tackling serious (and not-so-serious?) crime and international intelligence - in an attempt to establish 'once and for all' a singular mechanism by which we can identify each other or, more precisely, by which 'we' can identify ourselves to 'them'.
I agree fundamentally and absolutely with what Irdial says towards the end of his posting:
In this way, if the initial seed population of passports are issued correctly, and the people are trustworthy, you can generate a large body of good passports because everyone swears that the persons that they are introducing to the British Passport are known to them. This sort of dis[tr]ibuted human trust is far better for people than centralized trust; it puts a high value on the British Passport, makes citizens take responsibility for the security of the system..."
If we are going to rely on technology to establish or confirm identity then we need to marry it to existing human / social methods - which have stood us in good stead for centuries, if not millennia! - in order to maintain and build real trust within our globalised Information Society. For all sorts of reasons, the spread of Information & Communication Technologies included, the link between rights and responsibilities has been eroded. We must, if we are to have massive ICT systems permeating our lives, ensure that they are designed so as to persist and promote the best values and aspirations of our culture(s) and not use them as an excuse to give in to our worst fears and paranoias.
Just because something is easy to do - as large-scale ICT increasingly is, despite past incompetence and failures - or even if it seems immediately obvious, does not make that the best way to do it! Biometric duplicate-checking (to the extent that the software is capable, i.e. NEVER infallibly) may be able to prevent multiple ID documents being issued to the same person but it cannot, even in principle, prevent the wrong person being issued with an ID document in the name of / with details taken from a person who is not already on the system.
Maybe what we need to do is redesign, strengthen and extend/propagate the mechanisms by which we can vouch for each other (a la 'PGP web of trust') in such a way that the authorities can focus their attention - both positive (i.e. support & services for the most vulnerable & isolated) and negative (e.g. surveillance and capture of criminals) - on those individuals who we, the people, EQUALLY AS INDIVIDUALS identify as being difficult to trust.
N.B. there are obvious problems with this if we (attitudinally) or the authorities (institutionally) differentiate between the 'trustability' - i.e. ability to both trust and be trusted - of different, e.g. ethnic groups or communities of interest & circumstance, but I hope and believe that there may be enough commonality and interchange between people in all walks of life - at least at the level of individuals, especially those who advocate the rights of others - to overcome the mob thinking, media-induced hysteria and Gov't / corporate FUD that currently seems to prevail.
Practically-speaking, therefore, it may be as important or effective (even necessary?) to come up with the design for an organisation that can provide and protect citizen identity as with a (demonstration of a) technological system for issuing ID documents. People form networks, too, and it is the rules that we agree in this (real) world that should determine / dictate the specification of technological rule-based systems not vice versa!
No longer published, Connecticut Department of Social Services' Biometrics in Human Services User Group Newsletter [final issue] offers "a fascinating 7 year up close and personal look at biometric technology through the eyes of government users."
Written by Dave Mintie - who now writes and edits Biometric Watch - its user focus and plain language approach means that quite a number of the articles are still relevant and the complete series provides a useful source of reference on applied biometrics. The BHSUG Newsletter Index allows you to search for articles by Issue Date, Author, Title, Technology, Industry & Location.
It's a few months old now, but the salient points of 'The emerging use of biometrics' in The Economist still have a bearing:
"Biometrics still do not work well enough for many applications in which they are being deployed."
UKPS biometrics trial, anyone?
"Biometrics have not yet spread beyond such niche markets, for two main reasons. The first is the unease they can inspire among users. Many people would prefer not to have to submit their eyes for scanning in order to withdraw money from a cash dispenser. The second reason is cost."
I wonder if MORI had asked 'Do you want to be fingerprinted and have your iris scanned and have both kept in a Government database?' instead of 'Would you have an ID card?' whether 80% of people would have said 'yes'?
And as for cost - £3.1 billion? And the rest...
"Governments either do not believe that the costs of biometrics still outweigh any potential benefits or, more likely, fearing more terrorism they simply do not care."
A classic knee-jerk reaction, but one that even Blunkett is having to play down these days. As the author says later in the article, "[it] is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the chief motivation for deploying biometrics is not so much to provide security, but to provide the appearance of security." N.B. for 'terrorism' read also 'illegal immigration', 'illegal working', etc.
"The oldest biometric is the one we use most frequently—a person's face. But while recognising faces is something that people can do easily, computers find it very difficult."
Recognising faces is something we are built to do (from the neurones up) but what we do is much, much more than simply recognise someone's face - we connect memories, have feelings and opinions about people and can build relationships with them over time. Computers compare pixels, measurements and database records according to fixed rules - nothing more. And only one of these provides a real basis for trust.
"It is only logical to expect biometric passports and visas to take a multibiometric approach."
Precisely because of the limits of each individual method! And they make the highly significant point also that, "...[the] other critical choice, driven by the limitations of biometric technology, is that these biometrics will be used for verification, not identification. That is because identification is simply not feasible with databases containing millions of users." [emphasis added]
There's lots more good stuff here, including a digestible run-down of the most common biometric methods - well worth a read.
A little while back, I was discussing with my uncle and cousin an idea for a device to measure & model internal surfaces, storing and outputting them in digital 3D format - e.g. VRML/X3D, dxf, etc. I know you can get laser and infrared(?) 'tape measures' these days, but I was thinking of something a little more complex...
The SLE would combine 3 axis infrared or laser measurements - so the device knows exactly where it is in (internal) space at all times - and a 3 axis
digital spirit level, for accurate surface angle measurement. By scanning either automatically or at user-initiated reference points (press a button to add another point) the SLE can rapidly build an accurate 3D model of any internal space.
Combined with PC-based software, the SLE could quickly & efficiently:
- scan a room (or whole house) into a 3D modelling package. By combining
this with a menu-driven library of common domestic structures (e.g. in
PG's ISA), a close replica of the real room can be constructed.
- check a building for accessibility, e.g. wheelchair access, slopes,
etc.
Potential markets/users might include:
- Estate agents: 'clean house' viewing
- Construction: builders, fitters
- DIY: tie-in with stores, download product models to try in your virtual home
- Local government - building regulations, Health & Safety, etc.
I realise from past experience that I am never going to do anything about this, but that doesn't mean that someone else won't - or hasn't - and I'd really like to have one to play with if it ever gets built. N.B. this is not open season to spam me with DIY product ads!