Thursday, February 08, 2007

Dumb Card, Dumb Arguments


Senator Ian Campbell now has the job of spruiking the so called Smart Card, now that mr nice guy, Joe Hockey has handed over the baton. We all know that it is good for us and there is this huge horde of welfare cheats who need to get their come uppence and that it has space for us to put our favourite songs on and we don't have to get one if we don't want one and .........Yesterdays visit to Auntys A.M. proved an interesting one, if you were listening.

GILLIAN BRADFORD: So, how many more safeguards have you put into this bill since the head of your own Consumer and Privacy Taskforce, Allan Fels, put his criticism that there's no reason to put on this card things like your title, or your date of birth. He saw that as too much information stored on this card.Have you gotten rid of both those things?

IAN CAMPBELL: Well, I met with Professor Fels for some hours on Friday and went through his report. I think that Professor Fels made 27 recommendations. I've accepted, in whole or in part, 25 of them. And two of them are to make the date of birth, for example, a matter of choice for Australians. I want to make this...

GILLIAN BRADFORD: He didn't even want it there as a matter of choice. He said people should not be required. It should not go on the card. Once the information's there it can never be taken out of the system.

IAN CAMPBELL: Well, some people just want to have their date of birth there for their own reasons. And what I want is for Australians to, in fact, not only own this card - it'll be one of, potentially the only card in their wallet they, they actually own, it's theirs - they will be able to choose whether or not they have the date of birth. There's a lot of Australians...

GILLIAN BRADFORD: What about the title?

IAN CAMPBELL: ...a lot of, lot of people listening to this program who want a date of birth on a card so they can prove their age. And I'm not going to say no, you can't.

Contrast this with the rest of his days work where he reassures all that this baby will never become an identity card and there will be super stiff penalties for anyone who asks for it.
"The smartcard will be brought in by 2010 under a bill, introduced to Parliament today, which Senator Campbell says provides for a five-year jail penalty for anyone demanding the use of the new card for identification purposes" as quoted from Fairfax.

So have you got that? If some freedom loving teenager wishes to use it to prove to the bouncer that she is over eighteen, that's cool. Watch out bouncer, if you ask for it, because you may well be spending time in the slammer. And don't you in any way imagine that this young women is using it as an identity card because she's not.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Amazing how Ian Campbell's incompetence over the orange-bellied parrot when he was Minister for Stuffing up the Environment has been rewarded by giving him the Orwellian task of implementing Howard's police state ID card. Hey, we don't have to get one ... until 2010, when the intrinsic meaning of "choice" as Howard uses it comes into effect and no one can make toast without it.

You wonder how far ahead these fuckwits have thought about the various policies they seem to think are good for us. Problably not far at all. It's just in their nature to restrict and punish.

joe2 said...

"Restrict and punish" you hit it in two olney. They love to pick on the weakest first.. who can't fight back.

They will take on any guise, like fake environmental concern, to hold onto influence and power.

But you are probably right they would take no time to reflect.

Wilhelm Reich spotted them ages ago and they crushed him because the only time they can 'get off' is when their being cruel.