I had heard this week that an RFID card being developed for trial on Rotterdam's public transport system had been hacked, producing qualms about the security of all systems using RFID. However, according to the comment to the article below, the news turns out to be even more portentious for those in London, where an extremely unpopular Oyster card has existed for some time based on exactly the same Phillips manufactured 'MiFare' chip  

This Anarchist Federation analysis of the National (UK) ID Database, parts of which are already up and running with no need for cards, needs to be read as widely as possible.  A terrifying account of how much more than abstract 'privacy' is at stake, and FOR WHOM. The surveillance complex is class-specific in that that it's administered through things like benefits, immigration control, council housing, 'social services' and zero tolerance policing, which some full homeowning citizens will never need to worry about.  Mass refusal based on existing practices of necessary illegality looks the best hope, as in the case of the poll tax.  But no-one is pretending it will be easy.  This is a call to act before it's too late.  Please distribute onwards (also available as a printed booklet from BM ANARFED, London WC1N 3XX).    

DEFENDING ANONYMITY - 2nd edition

Thoughts for struggle against identity cards

CONTENTS Introduction - what�s really wrong with ID? Common arguments against ID, and their limitations National ID on the cards (from Organise! 64, Summer 2005) RFID � a new technology for ID cards (also from Organise! 64) Interview with the French Anarchist Federation Information from the German Anarchist Federation Panoptican Society (based on a leaflet from Manchester) Ways to fight ID - starting now! Getting involved with Defy-ID LATEST UPDATES from Resistance bulletin, and links to other AF publications.

Introduction - what�s really wrong with ID?

The Labour Party has steamed ahead with its national identity scheme and anyone concerned about threats to our freedom from an increasingly authoritarian state should be worried by the Identity Cards Act, which has been passed with little change from what the government wanted, in spite of all the 'write to your MP' lobbying by No2ID and optimistic hopes of House of Lords amendments.

PRESS RELEASE DATE: 27 March 2007

EMBARGO: Immediate

To mark ID-Day; March 26th 2007, the government’s planned opening date for it’s new network of passport interrogation centres, [1] Hackney NO2ID campaign group held information and awareness raising events at Hackney Community College’s Shoreditch and London Fields Campus, as well as outside the central Library by the Town Hall.

Having come full circle in half a century, today British citizens stand on the brink of having their 'fundamental rights and freedoms' enshrined in the plasticated chip of a compulsory ID card. But what, asks Martin Twomey of the Hackney NO2ID Group, is this card for exactly and whose interests does it serve?

This month’s Head to Head asks: Does the possible introduction of ID cards into the UK represent an attack on freedom? In a political climate in which the sacrifice of personal privacy is widely considered a fair price to pay for the protection of society from ‘terror’, the media debate often does not extend beyond the practicalities involved. Here the two very different types of information expert we aked to respond to this question both reject the middle ground consensus. But aside from this, Hanover Hex – of the Overseas and Home Security Secretariat – and Sean Cubitt – author of Digital Aesthetics – could not disagree more