In fact it's a problem that's been solved and used in a 80-year old novel. (R. Austin Freeman, The Red Thumb Mark, featuring Dr. Thorndyke, up on Gutenberg.). De-skilling and commodifying the process is the new part.

While there's no actual laws against owning or using lock picks in the UK (and you can buy a set for about GBP 30 at Northern Tools). But it can be counted as "going equipped" if you don't have a lawful reason to be walking about with them.

Given the family business, I and most members of my family are 'going equipped' - in some cases, to get into a building through the wall if we have to, and it's surprisingly quick and easy to get through a brick wall in ways that going through a steel door ain't - any time we're in our cars. However, a surprising number of common household items can be used for break-and-enter work, an ordinary cheap multitool will do. It's one of those charges that basically amounts to 'I lifted the suspect on account of not liking the face of 'im, sarge,' of which any jurisdiction has a fair few on the books.

More generally, I've only known two serious fraudsters well enough to speak to (and one of 'em, if I'd listened to him and gone along with it, would probably have had me farting through silk in some unextraditable beauty spot along with him by now, curse my suspicious nature) and, yes, well-crafted ID is a very basic tool to such men. The more official, the better, and I don't doubt that National ID will take a lot of work out of their trade.

Of course, for the really BIG frauds - reinsurance scams are the ones I'm personally familiar with - you use your own identity and rely on getting out with a win that amounts to fuck-you money in whatever spot you pick for your declining years.

So given a possibly imminent singularity, how long will it take us to reach a Culture-like state where material resources are in effect free by virtue of their abundance...and future criminality becomes somewhat limited in material scope?

AC: I tend towards the view that criminality is socially defined. Thus, it's unlikely that material abundance alone will ever have much effect on crime -- if someone steals the free local newspaper you're reading by grabbing it from your hands, it doesn't matter that its' replacement value was zero, the event is still an act of robbery insofar as your person is involved. Again, total abundance of all material and intellectual goods doesn't do jack to abolish crimes against the person (such as rape, assault, or murder).

Whenever money and covetousness will cease to exist.

Whenever money and covetousness will cease to exist.

Not at all! As pointed out - social circumstance can dictate much of the crime that continues today. The violence and bloodshed in Northern Ireland, for example, more boils down to deep rooted religious idiocy than a real desire for money or land.

A complete removal of scarcity would help reduce crimes, but only a real social reform in the way people think and undestand one another could completely eradicate crime.

And even then - sheer stupidity can often result in crimal negligence.

As a species that dictate law and demand, there will always be some form of crime. If we lived in a 'Utopia' then there would be thought crime, or a crime against malcontents who bad mouth the government.

..Wait a second...

At the office, they've installed a hand "print" reader (I suspect that it really reads the shape of your hand.)

I expect this sort of thing to become more popular.

Now

1) Mandatory contact with surfaces to conduct business

2) Influenza Pandemic.

Discuss.

At the office, they've installed a hand "print" reader ...

Groan.

Someone give 'em a copy of "The Coming Plague" by Laurie Mann, or something similar ...

A touching faith in fingerprints, but there are drawbacks they don't mention:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04/04/fingerprint_merc_chop/

A Malaysian businessman's finger was chopped off by thieves who wanted to get into is biometrically protected Mercedes.

The Coming Plague is by Laurie Garrett. She also wrote Betrayal of Trust, which is even more disturbing (if a bit drier).

Interestingly the Stross meme was confirmed in its infectiousness with a throwaway in the Guardian where Terry Pratchett on listing his ten favourite objects confessed that he had been severely evangelised on the subject of personal organisers by Mr S. and that he had used a foldaway keyboard, pocket-PC combo to write a good part of his latest novel (Thud!),

-- Andrew

I hope this is sceicne fiction...

I've been watching a recording of Ultraviolet, a British TV series from the late nineties about vampire hunting in the modern world. They're not seen in mirrors, not are they seen by TV cameras and X-rays, or heard by microphones. "The free-range days of humans are over."

And it struck me that, in that version of the vampire-verse, they can't pass a biometric ID check. Even if the old human ID still matches, those sensors which scan their eyes or their fingers can't see them

They don't exist.

I really hope this isn't the reason for pushing biometric ID.

(But an experienced vampire-hunter using a night-vision scope?)

You might not be able to by a Lexus with biometrics in the USA, but you can over here (assuming you want to buy a Lexus in the first place)

I'm an insurance claims investigator as a dayjob and I hear a lot of ways of paying for cars (cash is a constant one and over a certain amount I always suspect money laundering - used to be in offshore banking so I know a . . . little bit . . . more than most about that subject - but 'finance' is the usual answer) Even so, I have lost count of the times I've been told 'I flashed the plastic', and we are talking serious motors here - Merc SLKs, 7 series BMWs and even the odd Lexus. And these are NOT biometric cards, or even Chip & PIN ones mostly (not yet, anyway) Recently had to deal with one celebrity whose £130000 Merc went walkabout from outside the house, and he bought another one on plastic before he even reported the claim to us!

Why bother? Well, the more fraud there is, the less I get in my profit sharing and the more you pay in motor insurance premiums (industry figures say up to 1 in 4 motor insurance claims are fraudulent, from claiming a pair a Raybans you haven't got to cover your excess to claiming for a car that doesn't exist and, even if it did, was never on your driveway) Me? I think industry figures aren't telling the whole truth.


And before you think its Jack the Lad defrauding his big, bad rip off insurance company, we recently saw a gang convicted for stealing and shipping £50m of high value cars to the Middle East. The leader's brother has just been convicted of people smuggling, and has another charge pending of putting those people into prostitution. These aren't nice people and if id cards can help put a spoke in their wheels, they are worth considering.

Of course, the really big boys in the business just buy off the local cops and politicians ('George, Osama here, now about my family . . .)

Its 1066, you're living on a piss poor, freezing little island on the farthest edges of civilisation. You'd worry about where your next meal was coming from, if you could remember what a meal is.

What's that noise?

Its William the Bastard coming to steal what little you've got, and your country too, by force of arms.

Plenty will reduce the crimes of acquisition? I'd like some proof before I buy that particular bottle of snakeoil.

I want to see the movie of the ATM collapse and the brave little barrister, from a screenplay by Mr. Stross, and the fraud traced to a feudal alternate world, or super secret anti-demon forces, or the eschaton!