Robin Wilton's esoterica

What an ugly word. "Blog-plugs". Sounds like some kind of plunger... or the opposite.

Anyway, just a couple of links to other blogs which merit a visit:

Toby Stevens' blog here, which I've referred to several times in the past for his informed and sane views on Identity and Privacy - but I wanted to link specifically to his fabulous Molesworth conker tournament flyer. Classic. As you will have seen from today's earlier post, Toby just got an excellent piece printed in Computer Weekly.

And the Morning-Star blog here, for a wry look at many of today's political issues. The author says nice things about this blog, too, and I'm not too proud to reciprocate ;^)

For disambiguation purposes, "Morning Star" in this case does not refer to the Marxist/Communist daily. I had wondered whether there was an etymological connection with John Wycliffe (the "Morning Star of the Reformation") or the planet Venus, but after a brief email dialogue with the author, he confirmed that he likes the multiple connotations of "Morning Star", including the Lucifer/Fallen Angel one which had passed me by, somehow. There was another possibility, namely the 'spiked mace' or 'morgenstern', a medieval blunt instrument consisting of a spiked ball and chain on a handle... plausible but extreme, given the avowed BDSM interests of the blogger in question!

(Thought: is someone who blogs about whips a flogger...?).

I'd better leave it there, before the language of this post generates all kinds of novel search-engine hits. Anyone turning up here hoping for posts about whips and chains is, I'm afraid, in for a let-down.

I just don't know which way to turn on this one any more:

- Mr Blunkett used to like the idea of ID Cards, pervasive CCTV, national databases, and the restriction of trial by jury - but now thinks that eavesdropping on the 2012 Olympics might be a step too far...

- Sir Swinton Thomas has been the commissioner for government interception of communications, but says that making wire-tap evidence admissible in court 'could harm law enforcement and security services' and would make a difference in few, if any, terrorism prosecutions.

- Mr Brown, who was said to have led the Cabinet opposition to Mr Blunkett's ID Cards back in 2003, "absolutely agrees" with police requests that wire-tap evidence should be admissible and that 28 days is not long enough to hold terror suspects without charge...

- Tessa Jowell says that under the Gambling Act 2005, the Government will be able to effectively regulate all UK-based gambling activity, including its growing population of online gambling addicts, although Eliza Manningham-Buller says that her dedicated organisation (2,800 and growing) is unable to keep tabs on "nearly enough" of the activities of the 1,600+ individuals thought to pose a terrorist threat to the UK.

- And the MISC31 Committee wants government bodies to share all the data about us, while some of those bodies are not sure that would be legal under the Data Protection Act...

So do they want it or not... and if they do want it are they going to use it or not... and if they do use it is it going to work or not... and if it works, will that be a good thing or not? It's all too hard.

A good, thoughtful article by Toby Stevens here in Computer Weekly. He rightly identifies the issue of liability as one of the 'hard problems' of ID Cards, if they are indeed to be used as identifiers for commercial-sector transactions. Unfortunately, as I've blogged previously, it's a problem which a lot of the policy pronouncements on UK ID Cards seem designed to obfuscate.