Home Secretary bigs up fingerprint-activated iPods
Jeesh Maria
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Home Secretary John Reid is asking Apple and Sony, and other manufacturers, to join his crime fighting summit.
The summit will look at what manufacturers can do to add "anti-crime" features to their products.
A Blair policy review, released last month, raised the red herring very clever plan of fingerprint-activated MP3 players - we explain why this is silly a great idea here. Street robberies rose slightly according to Home Office figures. iPods and expensive mobile phones are often blamed for fuelling this growth. iPods and expensive mobile phones are often blamed for fuelling this growth.
Reid, interviewed on Sunday AM, said new gadgets mean criminals move on to stealing new types of products. Which they might continue to do whether the Home Office legislates to make fingerprint-activation compulsory on mobile phones or not.
Asked for one peice of advice for young people carrying such devices Reid said: "The one piece of advice I'd offer is to manufacturers to help us in designing in features to reduce crime." Reid even name-checked the iPhone and said young people should, "Not just look at the call tones and the camera quality but ask how it can prevent people stealing and reselling it." Reid used the example of improvements in switching off stolen mobile phones.
A spokesman for the Home Office told Reuters: "We already have a close working relationship with mobile phone manufacturers. John Reid is likely to approach Apple and Sony in the coming weeks to join this summit."®
COMMENTS
How is this big brother?
It's no different to cars having number plates to put people of stealing them, or their fuel tanks being made so its very difficult to suck out the fuel and steel it. Why should gadgets be any different?
Anyone want to buy a finger?
Didn't some Indian gentleman with a fingerprint security sytem in his car simply have the digit removed along with the vehicle? Apropos fingerprints, our new company laptops come with a fingerprint scanner. I have told people in no uncertain terms not to fuck with it as they are stupid (the scanners AND the scannees). I may put tape over them...
Introducing fingerprint identification
For iPods, mobile phones, PDA's etc, means that the sales of secateurs will sky rocket.
IT infrastructure monitoring strategies
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Steps to Take Before Choosing a Business Continuity Partner
Enabling efficient data center monitoring
Requirements Checklist for Choosing a Cloud Backup and Recovery Service Provider
