The UK Government Doesn't Understand the Internet.

LewieP · **Joined:** 29th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 7600

So the government have launched a 'debate forum' for the youth of Britain to discuss issues surrounding ID cards.

Lave's Skeptobot tipped me off to it.

Quote:

MyLifeMyID has just launched. It's going to be a footbullet of immense calibre. A while back leaked documents showed the government plans to "coerce" people into signing up for the database state by various methods. Once method was to go after the young first. Assuming they are the most stupid and gulliable.
[Article Continues]

And I have this to say about it:

Quote:

ID Cards.

It's a bit of a disgrace, I urge you to get onto the forums yourself, and join in with the debunking and pointing and laughing.

I don't know if you feel strongly about them or not.

I completely understand the theoretical benefits to a unified compulsory ID system, however, the proposed implementation of ID cards is both highly flawed, and unlikely to realise any of those benefits in my opinion, and be very costly to the taxpayer.

Regardless of your opinion on the issue, I imagine that most of you think it is important to have a coherent and open public debate over the issue.

The government would probably like you to think it is supporting an open debate on the issue, it recently launched the 'debate forum' mylifemyid.org. Have a look over it, have a look at the information provided, and then have a close look at the forums.
[Article Continues]

Curiosity · **Posted:** Thu Jul 10, 2008 15:42

That sounds shocking.

Hmmm... letter to the MP time, perhaps?

Kern · **Posted:** Thu Jul 10, 2008 15:54

I think my on-going series of letters to my MP on this issue have caused me to be listed in his tedious 'crank' file. I once opened a letter by saying that I really wished I wasn't opening the correspondence again then listing all the things I'd have liked to talk about. I then once again talked him through why his beloved legislation is so awfully bad and the arguments the government present are so abysmally weak. And my reply was - a standard Home Office form letter addressing none of my points.

At least in the 19th Century snakeoil salesmen were dashingly well-dressed and had cool patter. Whenever Ms Smith speaks I cringe in embarrasment.

Dr Lave · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 5979

Yeah it's pretty sickening. If I had time I would be wasting days posting there. But they've cleverly done this during my thesis.

I tempted to try and tell 4chan. But that could backfire massively...

Also incidentally, ages agoThe Governement hid the costs of ID cards.
Basically they had commited themselves to announce the costs of their database state in under 6 months. But they actually went close to a month over that deadline and waited till the day it was [i]announced that Blair was leaving[i] - so that the news it was billions over budget was buried.

I wrote about this blatent burying on my Blog, and despite only getting about 100 views that day, about 20 were from inside the houses of parliment. Which I always found quite interesting...

LewieP · **Joined:** 29th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 7600

go to 4chan, the worst that can happen is they call you a fag.
Edit: actually, no, 4chan are capable of much worse than that...
Edit2: Could you make a thread in the PA D&D Lave?

I would, but I am jailed for shitting in one of Tube's threads, and being a bad son.

Squirt · **Joined:** 31st Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 6516

Man, some of those threads are funny.

I do find it strange that the people in charge are so naive to believe that setting up a site like this and then starting some threads with leading questions is going to work, and not get torn to shreds by all the various web-savvy people out there.

Malabelm · **Posted:** Thu Jul 10, 2008 16:26

This all sounds a lot like alliwantforxmasisapsp.com, or whatever it was called.

LewieP · **Joined:** 29th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 7600

nynfortoo wrote:

This all sounds a lot like alliwantforchristmasisapsp.com

Pretty much, but instead of a handheld console it's our civil liberties.

Dr Lave · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 5979

LewieP wrote:

go to 4chan, the worst that can happen is they call you a fag.
Edit: actually, no, 4chan are capable of much worse than that...
Edit2: Could you make a thread in the PA D&D Lave?

I would, but I am jailed for shitting in one of Tube's threads, and being a bad son.

Yeah, I noticed that, he love's jailing you. I would but I really don't have time to*. And I know that if I made a thread, I would waster hours posting in it.

* 53 days left!

vegetables · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 354

I don't understand the negative nature of the thread. There's something quite heartening about the government asking for the views of young people, and the young people telling them almost exclusively to get to fucking fuck.

Dr Lave · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 5979

vegetables wrote:

I don't understand the negative nature of the thread. There's something quite heartening about the government asking for the views of young people, and the young people telling them almost exclusively to get to fucking fuck.

Ha ha! This is very true!

Dr Lave · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 5979

Scrap that Lewie - I did make a thread in D&D, but I leave it to you to fight the good fight, as I haven't the time.

As much as I love PA, it has it's fill of short sighted people, so it may become a shit storm, and I can't be dragged in.

sinister agent · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 7046

vegetables wrote:

I don't understand the negative nature of the thread. There's something quite heartening about the government asking for the views of young people, and the young people telling them almost exclusively to get to fucking fuck.

Yeah, but what's the betting they'll still interpret it as 'yoof in favah ov ID innit' by selectively quoting, distorting and openly lying after the site mysteriously vanishes?

Dr Lave · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 5979

sinister agent wrote:

vegetables wrote:

I don't understand the negative nature of the thread. There's something quite heartening about the government asking for the views of young people, and the young people telling them almost exclusively to get to fucking fuck.

Yeah, but what's the betting they'll still interpret it as 'yoof in favah ov ID innit' by selectively quoting, distorting and openly lying after the site mysteriously vanishes?

yeah, the Governement hasn't paid a marketing company to report accurate findings of the opinion of the youth, they;ve done it to prove that the youths love it.

Dudley · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 8679

sinister agent wrote:

vegetables wrote:

I don't understand the negative nature of the thread. There's something quite heartening about the government asking for the views of young people, and the young people telling them almost exclusively to get to fucking fuck.

Yeah, but what's the betting they'll still interpret it as 'yoof in favah ov ID innit' by selectively quoting, distorting and openly lying after the site mysteriously vanishes?

Is it called World of IDCards?

Dr Lave · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 5979

Jeaz, will you ever let it go Dudley?

kalmar · **Posted:** Thu Jul 10, 2008 22:23

Hah, people are using the "speak your branes" thing on it

sinister agent · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 7046

"WOID" does have a pleasing sound to it, admittdely. Kind of like a Latin 'void'.

MrD · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 2139

Eeeeeh, mind if I have a quick woid with you, Doc?

Dudley · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 8679

Lave wrote:

Jeaz, will you ever let it go Dudley?

Oh come on, you can't miss a diamond edged chance like that

vegetables · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 354

sinister agent wrote:

vegetables wrote:

I don't understand the negative nature of the thread. There's something quite heartening about the government asking for the views of young people, and the young people telling them almost exclusively to get to fucking fuck.

Yeah, but what's the betting they'll still interpret it as 'yoof in favah ov ID innit' by selectively quoting, distorting and openly lying after the site mysteriously vanishes?

That does leave them very open to being completely discredited in the eyes of the youth, who can just take screenshots of the site before it does and distribute them widely, making them look ridiculous. I'm not sure they'd risk doing that given the potential backfire. The internet can be surprisingly powerful at times.

sinister agent · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 7046

vegetables wrote:

sinister agent wrote:

vegetables wrote:

I don't understand the negative nature of the thread. There's something quite heartening about the government asking for the views of young people, and the young people telling them almost exclusively to get to fucking fuck.

Yeah, but what's the betting they'll still interpret it as 'yoof in favah ov ID innit' by selectively quoting, distorting and openly lying after the site mysteriously vanishes?

That does leave them very open to being completely discredited in the eyes of the youth, who can just take screenshots of the site before it does and distribute them widely, making them look ridiculous. I'm not sure they'd risk doing that given the potential backfire. The internet can be surprisingly powerful at times.

I think you underestimate the naivete of the gubmint. Plenty of big organisations have made such mistakes (they're already furiously deleting and editing comments and content on there accoriding to J 'the Nash' Nash).

Dr Lave · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 5979

Oh its so beautiful. I wish I had time to properly look through the site.

But god it's amazing. There are posts like this:

Quote:

To' all you people sayin' that if u get ur biometrics stolen then it’s much worse than before…

Just chill out dudes, its all good and everything. Haven't all y'all heard of technology, internets and encryption? They're going to make everything better all at once, just like chip and pin, its like a magic bullet. Only it’s a bullet for young persons benefit, for real!!

If someone steals you bank card they get your bank account, if they steal you new ID card they get everything (bank account, national insurance, EVERYTHING), but that doesn't matter, they can push some buttons to do with unhackable databases and it will all be sorted!!

Also with regards to civil liberties, the right to be alive is much more important than anything else, those of you who say that the government just keeps using this reasoning as a repetitive argument of scaremongering and false reductionism, are just totally wack!! I'm glad these things are going to make it much eesier to prove my identity, I'd rather pay £90 for one of these cards, it was already waaay to much of a headache having to remoov my wallet from my pocket and flip out the transparent section that has my drivers license in it.

Fo shizzy*

I love the kids.

Dr Lave · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 5979

Man you are right, they are talking about it on WoS. Nash is saying they are censoring like mad. This is going to get ugly.

Is there a way premeptively save the site? I would spider the whole forum ever hour if I knew how, because this is day one, when it get's round properly it's going to be amazing.

sinister agent · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 7046

See, this is why being a yoof is such a pain in the arse - the clever, brilliant, lovely people who come up with things like that get talked about and at as though they're violent juvenile morons.

I suspect J Nash is already nabbing the site if his style is anything to go by, but it wouldn't hurt for more people to do the same.

MrD · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 2139

You could either try a WGET spider, telling it not to cross domains...

but my solution would be to write a disgusting script which spews out
'wget http://mylifemyid.org/node/%DISCUSSION%?page=%PAGENO%'
where %DISCUSSION% is between 0 and 1000 and %PAGENO% is between 0 and 20 and just let the resulting script let rip on the site every hour.
(Seems like there's only ~350 DISCUSSIONs at the moment though)

If you've got the DownThemAll extension for Firefox installed, you can copy this to a new .htm file, open it in your browser, then tell it to download all the links. The layout will be screwed up, but them's the breaks... there's no context or anything. You might want to consider your own solution.

Code:

<html><body><script type="text/javascript">
for (i = 0; i < 400; i++) {
 for (p = 0; p < 20; p++) {
  document.write("<a href=\"");
  document.write("http://mylifemyid.org/node/"+i+"?page="+p);
  document.write("\">DISCUSSION " + i + ", PAGE " + p + "</a><br>");
 }
}
</script></body></html>

vegetables · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 354

sinister agent wrote:

See, this is why being a yoof is such a pain in the arse - the clever, brilliant, lovely people who come up with things like that get talked about and at as though they're violent juvenile morons.

Perhaps they really believe that stuff about us Young People all being thugs who don't like hot baths and furious critical debate and other things old people like, and it's not just all just a ruse to please Middle England. I've never been not cynical enough to think that before.

Curiosity · **Posted:** Fri Jul 11, 2008 1:27

Either way - sent to my MP.

Joans · **Joined:** 31st Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 8648

Lave wrote:

Oh its so beautiful. I wish I had time to properly look through the site.

But god it's amazing. There are posts like this:

Quote:

those of you who say that the government just keeps using this reasoning as a repetitive argument of scaremongering and false reductionism, are just totally wack!!

I love the kids.

This is the best thing I've ever read, somebody out there really thinks that a sentence containing the phrases "totally wack" and "repetitive argument of scaremongering and false reductionism" could possibly have come out of a single persons mouth.

They've got to be running everything through some sort of "yoof filter" to come up with this stuff.

sinister agent · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 7046

Joans wrote:

Lave wrote:

Oh its so beautiful. I wish I had time to properly look through the site.

But god it's amazing. There are posts like this:

Quote:

those of you who say that the government just keeps using this reasoning as a repetitive argument of scaremongering and false reductionism, are just totally wack!!

I love the kids.

This is the best thing I've ever read, somebody out there really thinks that a sentence containing the phrases "totally wack" and "repetitive argument of scaremongering and false reductionism" could possibly have come out of a single persons mouth.

They've got to be running everything through some sort of "yoof filter" to come up with this stuff.

I'm pretty sure that's a real yoof taking the piss and pointing out how insultingly shit the government and their marketing - sorry, research company - are being. Because young people aren't, in fact, stupid, and crap like this just alienates them further.

Joans · **Joined:** 31st Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 8648

sinister agent wrote:

Joans wrote:

Lave wrote:

Oh its so beautiful. I wish I had time to properly look through the site.

But god it's amazing. There are posts like this:

Quote:

those of you who say that the government just keeps using this reasoning as a repetitive argument of scaremongering and false reductionism, are just totally wack!!

I love the kids.

This is the best thing I've ever read, somebody out there really thinks that a sentence containing the phrases "totally wack" and "repetitive argument of scaremongering and false reductionism" could possibly have come out of a single persons mouth.

They've got to be running everything through some sort of "yoof filter" to come up with this stuff.

I'm pretty sure that's a real yoof taking the piss and pointing out how insultingly shit the government and their marketing - sorry, research company - are being. Because young people aren't, in fact, stupid, and crap like this just alienates them further.

Sorry, I only read it out of context and I've seen enough marketing websites to know that they are stupid enough to think that would be acceptable.

sinister agent · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 7046

s'alright, I wasn't sure until the bit about the wallet, either.

MaliA · **Posted:** Fri Jul 11, 2008 9:07

Lave wrote:

Oh its so beautiful. I wish I had time to properly look through the site.

But god it's amazing. There are posts like this:

Quote:

To' all you people sayin' that if u get ur biometrics stolen then it’s much worse than before…

Just chill out dudes, its all good and everything. Haven't all y'all heard of technology, internets and encryption? They're going to make everything better all at once, just like chip and pin, its like a magic bullet. Only it’s a bullet for young persons benefit, for real!!

If someone steals you bank card they get your bank account, if they steal you new ID card they get everything (bank account, national insurance, EVERYTHING), but that doesn't matter, they can push some buttons to do with unhackable databases and it will all be sorted!!

Also with regards to civil liberties, the right to be alive is much more important than anything else, those of you who say that the government just keeps using this reasoning as a repetitive argument of scaremongering and false reductionism, are just totally wack!! I'm glad these things are going to make it much eesier to prove my identity, I'd rather pay £90 for one of these cards, it was already waaay to much of a headache having to remoov my wallet from my pocket and flip out the transparent section that has my drivers license in it.

Fo shizzy*

I love the kids.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA.

Dr Lave · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 5979

Slippery slope? NO NEVER.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7507627.stm

Quote:

A central database holding details of everyone's phone calls and emails could be a "step too far for the British way of life", ministers have been warned.
Plans for such a database are rumoured to be in the Communications Data Bill.
But Information Commissioner Richard Thomas said "lines must be drawn" to defend "fundamental liberties".
He told the BBC he was not aware of such a database in any other democracy. He said there had also not been enough debate on the expanded DNA database.

GET TO FUCKING FUCK!

Cras · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 49232

It's clearly just a cunning plan to revitalise Royal Mail by making everyone shift back away from the telephone and email.

Cras · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 49232

Also remember, folks - plain text unencrypted email is the only way nasty men pass information across the innernehts. Oh yes it is.

sinister agent · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 7046

Craster wrote:

Also remember, folks - plain text unencrypted email is the only way nasty men pass information across the innernehts. Oh yes it is.

Not true. They also swap photos they took of train stations.

Mr Russell · **Joined:** 6th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 12244

I once downloaded a program of a dog called Panto. I was the best thing I ever experienced.

Be Excellent To Each Other

The UK Government Doesn't Understand the Internet.
Propaganda+Patronisation = >:(

Who is online

Be Excellent To Each Other

The UK Government Doesn't Understand the Internet. Propaganda+Patronisation = >:(

Who is online

The UK Government Doesn't Understand the Internet.
Propaganda+Patronisation = >:(