Re: insidious biometrics, identity crises

[jo walsh <jo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

re scr, ltns

> What worries me on this score is that this ("a disinterested group of
> technical professionals") is exactly what I understand Stand.org.uk
> was meant to be.
> Are you suggesting that Stand no longer comes across as
> "disinterested"?

well, i think stand is two things: It's a small group of people who set up
an online service and 'lobby' its users when a particular political issue
that they have strong opinions about, comes to a crisis or action point.
stand's homepage positions it far away from the original
'adopt-your-mp / fax-your-mp' neutral passage ideas that i thought once
inspired it... RIP was the original interested single issue.
( http://stand.org.uk/weblog/about/ )

writing bumptious and big gruntly letters to the graun pronouncing 'we at
stand' to hold a single strong view, removes much taint of disinterest. 
http://stand.org.uk/LetterToGuardian.2003-07-08.txt 
  
OR, stand is a confederation of n000 individuals, internet and telco
professionals, who signed up to stand's original adopt-an-mp scheme to
help educate their 'representative' about RIP, a very network-specific
issue. given that body of techliterate goodwill and MP adoption, it makes
sense to keep pinging them, keep momentum going; turn stand into the
core of something like a uk.based http://moveon.org/  

but stand-the-core-clique doesn't represent stand-the-user-base. the
latter are concerted individual voices; when the kind of topdown support
and intermeshed press exists as does for the (global?) biometric ID card
proposals, an individual voice isn't going to be listened to (unless it
has some very serious financial momentum behind it) 

so in in terms of anyone taking up mantles on issues - ukcrypto would make
sense, are specialists, many academics, have been around for a long while
before these issues hit our mediagovernmental process, and will be
afterwards. or secondarily london.pm - a bigger voice to claim to speak.
the whole issue of representativeness though, that's harder.  


yay siesta, btw

zx
--
"Common sense won't tell you. We have to tell each other." -DNA