[18holesin]

Quite apart from the barbarity of torture, the consequences of information obtained under torture are far reaching, especially when they are used by governments to shape or justify policy and laws. As an example, here in the UK the government wants to impose compulsory ID cards containing biometric data on the holder linked to multiple government, medical and law enforcement data bases.

There are many profound implications for this; it changes the relationship between citizen and government (actually we are subjects) meaning we have to justify ourselves to government and their agencies for the first time in our history. You will be required to produce the card on demand, to purchase a rail or air ticket even petrol and anything else the government deems. Databases will be used to categorise people by ethnicity, location - current past and future, political tendencies, union membership and many, many other infringements on privacy.

When first announced the government stated they were needed to protect us against terrorism. Police chiefs were rolled out to back up their position stating they had seen unspecified intelligence leaving them in no doubt that the threat was real, imminent and catastrophic justifying any infringement on civil liberties that i.d. cards would bring.

It has since transpired that the "intelligence" they were shown referred to so called "dirty bombs" planned to be detonated in UK cities. This "intelligence" has since been shown to obtained from a radical Muslim after many months of torture, since proven to be totally spurious.

The government has since admitted that i.d. cards would not have prevented ANY of the terrorist attacks in the UK or indeed in the US and are now justifying the £8 billion i.d. card bill on the prevention of identity theft....

It is just one indication of how cynical politicians will, if allowed, use even the degradation of common held values to make policy, law and even war and it can all be traced back to one person having a cattle prod shoved up his arse.


BTW - the last government to attempt a nation i.d. scheme backed up by databases was the German Nazi Part in the 1930's. It was invented by IBM expressly for Adolf Hitler to provide him with the first of many solutions to Germany's perceived problems that led to the Holocaust. Indeed, there was no solution IBM was unwilling to provide Hitler with.

Until the 12-year strategic alliance between IBM and the Nazi regime, people could be counted manually, but not individually identified. At the end of the 19th Century, IBM invented data processing with its Hollerith punch card system - that is, a simple process of storing information on individuals, places, objects and processes by mechanically punching select holes in designated columns and rows. In 1933, as Hitler wanted to identify the Jews and other 'enemies of the state' so he could target them for persecution, IBM energetically stepped forward, offering to create an automated system for Hitler's first national census. The company designed a census that not only counted heads but also recorded the characteristics of those heads by name and background. Throughout the 12-year Reich, IBM's technology helped the Nazis in all six phases of the Holocaust: identification, social exclusion, confiscation, ghettoisation, deportation and even extermination.

There was an IBM customer site, known as the Hollerith Department, in almost every concentration camp, from Auschwitz (IBM coded 001) to Dachau (IBM coded 003). It all began with national identification in 1933.

The system was used to target any designated enemy: for example, homosexuals (coded 2), Jehovah's Witnesses (3), Communists (6), Gypsies (2) and, of course, Jews (8).

As ever, US companies are at the forefront in bidding for contracts to supply the technology for the UK's i.d. cards and databases.

IBM’s punch cards were simply a piece of paper with holes in it. In practice, the technology was deadly.

I.D. cards are simple credit card like smart cards and as our government says - "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear"......

http://www.no2id.net/