More on ID cards
Posted: November 25th, 2003 | 1 Comment »With a bit of luck, the road to the new “entitlement” cards will be less than smooth. Thanks to Owen Blacker for these two:
- Those 5,000 no votes aren’t staying buried
- One of the proposed functions of ID cards is to outlaw “fictitious” names. But what’s the difference between a fictitious name and a real one? From Owen:
An interesting post to UK Crypto last week on multiple “real name”s.
Bear in mind that English Common Law (and Scots, iirc) allows us all to
use the name of our choosing in any context. If I wish to be known as
Simon Davies, for example, in the context of political debate, there is
nothing (in theory) that could stop me from doing so. My “real name” is
any name by which a non-trivial group of people know me.Another example would be my sister. Her birth certificate reads “Amy
Catrin Blacker”, but she is uniformly known as Catrin or Cati
(traditional Welsh forms of Catherine and Cathy, respectively). She
uses those three identities variously, as well as Mrs C Gronow and Mrs
AC Gronow, in various circumstances (Gronow being the name of her
now-ex-husband). When she remarries next year, she’ll doubtless add one
or two more “real names” to her collection.
You’re damn right they ignored the comments.
Read it from the Minister’s own mouth:
http://downlode.org/stand/
I sent this to Stand, but got no reply.