davecl.bsky.social
Astrophysicist at Imperial College London. Works with space missions like Herschel and Planck, on extragalactic astronomy, observational cosmology and astrobiology. Ask about phosphine on Venus! Also writes science fiction. Not speaking for anybody
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if i'm asked why i wear a mask, i don't say that i'm immunocompromised and don't want to get sick, or that i don't want to get others sick. i tell them i don't want the government tracking me by facial biometrics. works every time to get the right-wing conspiracy mongers to put on a mask
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If you watch it as a comedy it works pretty well.
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You assume that the intent of the design is to not track users, however last time this was proposed the government wanted tracking as an explicit feature. It may be possible to do this in a secure way, in theory, but that is not what the UK government wants so we won’t get it.
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Trump administration planning major increase of Guantánamo deportations, including citizens of Britain, France and other allies www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...
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So you have the option. With a government digital ID card you won’t.
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Sounds as if advertisers are wasting money if you use an ad blocker :-) Fine by me!
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Not if you use an ad blocker! And those databases are not centralised, not linked to eg. tax records, bank records, health records. A government digital ID card allows all that to happen. The potential for abuse, criminal and governmental, is enormous. Putin & Trump would love it.
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Am surprised that you, as a programmer, are prepared to almost literally put your life in the hands of this one big system. Most programmers I know are much more cautious about over centralised systems where outages & failures can have a huge impact.
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As said the database behind it is the main issue, but there are many other problems. Nothing is truly secure so it's a single point failure mode for ID theft. Many people - old disabled poor - can't/don't use smartphones, so would be disconnected. Data coverage isn't 100% blacking verification etc.
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Estonia knows how such things can be abused by eg. The KGB. UK politicians do not, and Palantir et al. will be champing at the bit to run and mine the backend. Not safe!
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Worry not about the card, but the database behind it tracking all uses - inherent to anything digital - and function creep extending its use beyond originally agreed purposes. Also worry what a Farage government would do with it - the UK’s own version of a passbook perhaps?