Permission granted!

As you know I went to the Charing Cross Station on Thursday.

Well, this morning I received the following letter from the Metropolitan Police Force:

Re: Demonstration – ID Cards received 24 August 2006-08-26

Dear Mr. D-Notice,

I, Superintendent [some Copper], give authority under s. 134 Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 for your demonstration to proceed on 31 August 2006 between 6pm and 7pm in Parliament Square.

I do not intend to impose any conditions on your event.

In the event that your demonstration causes any of the following, the senior police officer in attendance may impose conditions on you and the participants

(a) Hindrance to any person wishing to enter or leave the Palace of Westminster,

(b) Hindrance to the proper operation of Parliament,

(c) Serious public disorder,

(d) Serious damage to property,

(e) Disruption to life in the community,

(f) A security risk in any part of the Designated Area

(g) Risk to safety of members of the public (including any taking part in the demonstration)

Yours sincerely,

[some Copper]

Yay!

Let’s see what happens!

Protest

Well, as promised, I went to the Charing Cross Police Station to apply for a protest within the "Designated Area", i.e. within 1 km of Parliament.

After being in the queue for 1 hour, briefly speaking to Mark Thomas and others - hello to the guy protesting to highlight the plight of the crayfish - I managed to get my form signed and stamped to enable me to protest aainst ID cards next Thursday, at 6 pm.

Now all I have to do is wait for the poice to send me a letter authorising my protest and seeing what restriction they put on it. I'm assuming only one placard and no loud-speakers...

Let's see what happens!

The Citizen Registration Programme

I know this is late – going on the date of the article, it was just after I’d moved down to the Village and so was without the t’internet – but I’ve only just discovered – via Blair Watch – the locations of the ID card registration centres.

Of interest to me are the ones for London, as well as the ones for back home Oop t’North-west and also north Wales, which are as follows:

Blackburn

I gown up in east Lancashire and I can have a real go at this.

They’re expecting one office – in Jack Straw’s constituency – to serve not only east Lancashire (Blackburn, Burnley, surrounding areas, total pop. approx 250,000), but it appears they’re also expecting it to serve central Lancashire (Preston, Chorley and possibly Bolton), which will have a greater population, and it appears they also want it to Blackpool (pop. 125,000), Morecambe and Lancaster (total pop. 200,000) which will be a real bastard to get to Blackburn from. From experience I know it’ll take the best part of an hour from Blackpool on the train, but at least it’s direct; for Morecambe and Lancaster you’re expecting people to travel for more than an hour and a half on the train (the road is a no-no, as it’s the M6!) with at least one change in Preston! That or they’re expecting you to travel to Kendal, i.e. the Lake District, which will be even worse for public transport, due to it being a rural area!

In total they expecting one office, in an area with bad public transport, to serve the best part of 1 million people!

Liverpool

Manchester

Obvious choices: biggest cities in the area and can catch a lot of the out-lying areas.

Wrexham

This is a bit of a strange choice. Yes it’d be useful for Chester & western Cheshire and north-Staffordshire, but what about people in the rest of north Wales? I’ve got family in north Wales and so I know how bad the public transport is: small, crappy buses, very slow trains (where they exist, i.e. not everywhere). Anywhere west of Rhyl and you’re fucked with this office, especially if you’re one of the island-dwellers (Anglsey/Ynys Mon). There is the possibility of using the one in Aberystwyth, but, again, the problems with public transport apply, possibly more so. They could use the “Remote Communities Service” which will consist of a webcam – nothing like using a secure system, with high resolution pictures! It’s ideal for ID cards!

As for the Village:

London

One centre?! One fucking centre?! One fucking centre to serve 8 million plus people?! As well as the out-lying suburbs? Are they serious? Fair enough there is the (very slight) possibility of those in western London using the Reading centre and those in the far south of London and Surrey using the Crawley one, but come on…

There’s a map on the locations of centres here.

The Lone Protestor

There's a plan to have simultaneous "lone demonstrations" within the 1 km SCOPA "Designated Area" from Rachel (also here):

A recent damn-fool law has made it illegal to protest anywhere near Parliament without official police permission, and comedian Mark Thomas is organising a stunt to highlight the danger and stupidity of having this law in a democracy.

Please note that taking part in this is 100% LEGAL, and the whole purpose of the stunt is to overload the system by dozens of people all asking for permission to protest all at the same time.

The law: Under section 132 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 [PDF] it is an offence to organise or take part in a demonstration in a public place within the “designated area” if authorisation has not been given by the Metropolitan Police Commissioner. Participants may be subject to a fine of up to £1000 and “organizers” face up to a year in Jail...

Many people see this legislation as an assault on our civil liberties and human rights. It’s not always practical to plan a week in advance what government activities you may or may not disagree with. Sometimes a spontaneous response is called for. And surely the most appropriate place to demonstrate against the government’s actions is within the newly “Designated Area”, at the very core of this country’s democratic foundation.

Get the application form here (word document).

Meet on Thursday 24th August outside Charing Cross police station any time between: 5.30pm-6pm to hand in your SOCPA forms. The address is Agar Street, London, WC2N 4JP and a map is attached. You have to fill in form and hand it in to the police 1 week before you protest, so everyone has to turn up at the same time to give their forms to the Police. This will mean if 100 people turn up and apply for permission, then the unfortunate police have to license and approve 100 lone demonstrations... If you can’t make it to hand the forms in but want to demonstrate on the 31st, post them to: Ben Stern S2S Suite Z009 Old Truman Brewery 1 Brick Lane London E1 6QL.

The mass lone demonstrations will be 1 week later on Thursday 31st August and will again be at 6:00pm for 1 hour.

5.30 - 6pm Thursday 24th August, show up at the same time as other "lone protesters" at Charing Cross Police Station.

6pm Thursday 31st August, show up and protest about your personal issue in Parliament Square.

See you at the Police Station!

Cloned Biometric Passports/ID cards

From Wired:

A German computer security consultant has shown that he can clone the electronic passports that the United States and other countries are beginning to distribute this year.

The controversial e-passports contain radio frequency ID, or RFID, chips that the U.S. State Department and others say will help thwart document forgery. But Lukas Grunwald, a security consultant with DN-Systems in Germany and an RFID expert, says the data in the chips is easy to copy.

Grunwald says it took him only two weeks to figure out how to clone the passport chip. Most of that time he spent reading the standards for e-passports that are posted on a website for the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations body that developed the standard. He tested the attack on a new European Union German passport, but the method would work on any country's e-passport, since all of them will be adhering to the same ICAO standard.

I've already posted that this has been done to the Dutch ID cards, so corroboration about how they're a complete waste of time.

Meet the new boss...

From the Observer:

Gordon Brown is planning a massive expansion of the ID cards project that would widen surveillance of everyday life by allowing high-street businesses to share confidential information with police databases.

The government doesn’t seem to listen to anyone: no-one wants ID cards.

Far from intending to dump ID cards once he is in Downing Street, Brown is quietly studying how biometric technology - identifying people by unique markers such as fingerprints and iris patterns - could be expanded over the next 20 years to fight crime.

So much for Gordy being different to the Dear Leader… time for a new government.

The plan would make the ID cards scheme cheaper, since companies would pay for access to the national identity register - a government database of biometric information being compiled for the ID cards programme. Brown's plans belie reports that the Treasury, concerned about the cost of ID cards, would ditch them when he became Prime Minister. 'It's almost the opposite - Gordon's thinking about ID cards is that it's part of the answer but there's a much wider picture,' said a source close to him.

Well that’s one way to back the millions… er, sorry, BILLIONS they’re going to spend on them before the whole thing falls apart…

Deja-vu, all over again...

From the Sunday Times:

IRAN is seeking to import large consignments of bomb-making uranium from the African mining area that produced the Hiroshima bomb, an investigation has revealed.

A United Nations report, dated July 18, said there was “no doubt” that a huge shipment of smuggled uranium 238, uncovered by customs officials in Tanzania, was transported from the Lubumbashi mines in the Congo.

Iraq was alleged to be obtaining uranium – the old “Yellow cake” – from Niger…

It has also emerged that terror cells backed by Iran may be prepared to mount attacks against nuclear power plants in Britain. Intelligence circulating in Whitehall suggests that sleeper cells linked to Tehran have been conducting reconnaissance at some nuclear sites in preparation for a possible attack.

The build up seems to be underway…