ID

Via comp.risks, across the wire the electric message came: German students crack encryption on over 2bn RFID smartcards made by NXP Semiconductor. The cards in question are NXP’s MiFare Classic type, and are used for public transport….but also for access control in sensitive government installations, it turns out. Inevitably, NXP threw up its hands –…

Read More Can Haz RFID? Noes? I HAZ FN FAL!

So, the Obscurer snagged an interview with Gordon Brown. And what did he have to say? Well, he spoke of identity cards. And the news is not good at all. It seems that Brown is ill-informed about his own proposals (something which we have seen already from past ministers), is still committed to the most…

Read More Still addicted

To my utter astonishment, our neighbouring local authority has joined the movement of councils refusing to cooperate with the National Identity Register. Spelthorne Borough Council – that’s the area north of the Thames that was taken over from London by Surrey in 1996 – passed a motion on the 13th of December rejecting ID cards…

Read More Staines: Last Best Hope of Civilisation

The Biggest Data Fart In The World Ever (BDFITWE) just keeps on getting better/worse. Check this out: Sir John Bourn, the outgoing comptroller and auditor general, told a secret session of the public accounts committee that a senior business manager at Revenue & Customs had authorised the information to be released in its full form.…

Read More That’s not what software-as-a-service is meant to mean!

It’s usually the Home Office that leads the way in the British government’s eternal Olympics of stupidity; but now and again, someone is inspired to go that bit further, to be a tiger, to raise the bar. Having built a monster centralised database of every last child in the UK, the Revenue burned it to…

Read More ID Cards will make us safe from identity theft