What Jamaicans Need To Know (National I.D System)

June 24, 2015

A French appeals court has ruled that police carried out unjustified identity checks on five men from ethnic minorities, ordering the government to pay them damages in an unprecedented ruling that activists hope will help reduce widespread discrimination.

The collective case was the first of its kind in France, where anti-racism groups say non-white people are unfairly targeted by police. Gratuitous ID checks have long been cited as a prime reason for troubled relations between police and residents of poor suburbs.

Thirteen men, all of black or Arab origin, originally filed suit in the case. None of the 13 men had a police record, but each said he was a victim of multiple, humiliating ID checks, widely known as “stop and frisk”, and considered by police as an important crime-fighting tactic.


A lower court ruled in 2013 that police did not overstep legal boundaries with the ID checks. The Paris appeals court overturned part of that ruling, saying on Wednesday the checks against the five men were illegal, and ordered the state to pay €1,500 (£1,065) to each.

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May 13, 2014

Estonia's online voting system could easily be hacked by attackers working on behalf of an outside government, researchers have discovered. That's alarming news considering how much faith Estonia has shown in its e-voting system; it's the only country that uses web-based voting "in a significant way" for national elections, researchers said in a report published Monday. Other countries including the US have steered clear of web-based votingout of security concerns.

And Estonia is a good example of why they're reluctant to make the jump. After putting together a replica of the Estonian voting setup, a research team found that they were able to infiltrate the voting technology and change the result of an entire election — without leaving any real trace of the digital break-in. "The Estonian system uses a security architecture that may have been adequate when the system was introduced a decade ago, but it is now dangerously out of date," said the report authored by J. Alex Halderman, assistant professor of computer science and engineering at University of Michigan, along with several security experts and Ph.D. students. "Estonia’s system places extreme trust in election servers and voters’ computers — all easy targets for a foreign power."

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January 26, 2012

I can’t count how many times I’ve been stopped. I talk with people who say they've-never been stopped in their lives, and I say to myself but how can that be?


—Dedé, of North African descent, St. Priest (outside Lyon), July 24, 2011


Most people in France have been stopped and asked by police for proof of their identity—or “contrôle d’identité”—at some point in their lives.

Anyone can theoretically be asked for proof of identity, and a straightforward stop should usually last only a few minutes and involve little more than providing one’s identity card or other proof of identity upon demand by a police officer.

However, research conducted in and around Paris, Lyon, and Lille in 2011 indicates that the identity check system is open to abuse by the French police, who use the system as a central tool in their operations and have broad powers to stop and check individuals regardless of whether they suspect criminal activity. These abuses include repeated checks—“countless” in the words of most interviewees—sometimes involving physical and verbal abuse. Stops can involve lengthy questioning, orders to empty pockets, bag searches, and intrusive pat-downs—including of children as young as 14-years-old, who described having to put their hands against a wall or car to be patted down.

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Latest update : 2010-02-25



National ID cards in France are mandatory if you want to prove your nationality, but entering into the process of getting one leads you into the notorious bureaucratic maze of French administration from which it can take an age to emerge.

In France, it’s not uncommon to be stopped by the police and asked to show your ID card. If you do not have one, it could result in a friendly visit to your local police station - or Commissariat as it is know in France - for a stern talking to.

The ID card in not only necessary for police ‘stop and searches’, it is also necessary for daily administrative life in France, such as opening a bank account or buying property. The French ID card can also be used as an alternative to a passport when inside the EU.

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updated 7/8/2009 2:24:09 PM ET


Computer networks in the tiny Baltic country of Estonia were disabled two years ago in a cyber attack similar to the one that knocked out Web sites in South Korea and the U.S. on Wednesday. Here's a summary of what happened.

Estonia jammed

In April and May 2007, hackers unleashed a wave of cyber attacks that crippled dozens of government and corporate sites in Estonia, one of Europe's most wired countries. Estonian authorities traced the so-called denial of service attacks to Russia, and suggested they had been orchestrated by the Kremlin — a charge Moscow denied.

The online assault followed Estonia's decision to move a Soviet World War II memorial from downtown Tallinn on April 27, 2007, sparking furious protests from Russia's government and rioting among Estonia's ethnic Russian minority.

Experts said hundreds of thousands of computers were used in a coordinated attack against government agencies and banks.

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12:01AM BST 25 Sep 2001


Have we had ID cards before? ID cards were introduced during the First World War as part of a statutory registration scheme. It ended in 1919. They were reintroduced in 1939 and remained in force for several years after the war until they were abolished by Churchill in 1952. They were only considered tolerable in times of emergency and the public came to resent the police checks in times of peace. The last Conservative government toyed with the idea in 1995. Michael Howard, then Home Secretary, issued a Green Paper setting out the various options but decided not to proceed.

Would they cut crime? The police think ID cards would help in a number of areas, including tracing suspects or identifying accident victims. But this could only be of benefit if the card was compulsory and carried at all times. The police already have many powers to ask people who they are in specific circumstances. Critics say a burglar is breaking the law anyway so penalties for not carrying an ID card are unlikely to deter. They could be useful in cases of low-level disorder such as fights or football hooliganism where the police want to establish identities quickly without taking them back to the police station. The Commons home affairs select committee, which looked into ID cards in 1996, said there was "no firm evidence" that ID cards had reduced crime in countries which use them.

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Desk trauma said:

What kind of site moves eight year old content? THEY are on to you!

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Desk trauma said:

As I said, clearly THEY are on to you.

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Desk trauma said:

Paranoia, paranoia.

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Desk trauma said:

Like I said, THEY are on to you.

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