Begging to differ...

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith says that people "can't wait" for ID cards to come in. Whoever is coming up to tell her this is, I'd like to suggest, not representative of the entire nation. Frankly, I don't believe it happens all that much.

Can anyone actually say what ID cards are for? Originally, we were told that they'll combat terrorism, but no one could explain how. Next, they were to confirm our identities when we need to do so (getting a passport, etc.) but we can already do that. Then they were to confirm our identities when making a purchase (chip & pin, anyone?) Now they're asserted as being simply a Good Thing. But, seeing as we will not be compelled to carry them, for whom are they a Good Thing?

Well, consider this: The total cost of implementing the ID card scheme now stands at £5.1 billion and the projected compulsory cost to every adult in the UK looks like being £60. Smith claims that the market for issuing passports and ID cards is set to be around to £200 million a year. Would I be cynical in thinking that this is about generating cash, not national security or to "help" us in some indefinable way?

Now, the serious point: ID cards are supposed to be uncrackable. That's fair enough, but as anyone who's ever thought about it for a short while may have noticed, the forms of ID we'll have to provide to get one of these super-duper cards are all less secure. It's like locking a safe inside another safe like a series of Russian Dolls. You still have to hide the key or combination to the outer safe somewhere. This is the eponymous weakest link. And, because security is only as strong as its weakest link, it's open to abuse - as Ms Smith found out this week when a group calling itself No2ID took a glass she'd been drinking from at a conference. This glass apparently has her fingerprints all over it.

So, do we, as Ms Smith asserts, really want to be forced to pay £60 for something that will languish in the back of the bits drawer at home? I think not. Maybe it's time I started a petition: The Campaign for Real Big Brother, calling on the government to either implement a proper, competent police state or to forget the whole idea. No bumbling about in the middle ground promising it will provide indefinable "benefits". It'd be a satirical campaign, of course, but like all satire it has a serious point. Stop wasting our time and money, Ms Smith. The people the terrorists want to blow up is the likes of you, not us, the poor sods they can and do get to. And yet, we're the ones being eyed suspiciously, 24/7.

Back To Wires, Back To Reality

I've never been a fan of wireless networks but now there's a real reason to mistrust them. Computer security researchers Erik Tews and Martin Beck have managed to partially crack the hitherto secure WPA encryption that should be used on all domestic wireless routers and cards. If you're using the older WEP encryption, please know that it's crackable in about a minute, the tools to do so are available online, and that the neighbour's geeky kid is possibly already aware of this - if he's not had a good look around your network already.

If you're reading this and have only limited computer knowledge, how long do you think it would have been before you'd have found out that WPA wasn't as secure as the man in the shop said? It's not like he's going to call you years after selling you a wireless router to warn you. When WPA is fully cracked, it'll give hackers (more correctly called "crackers") a whole new world to explore. More importantly, it'll give malicious individuals a new infection tool for worms.

The best solution to wireless insecurities is always going to be wires. They may be unsightly in some people's eyes, but at least your neighbours can't steal your broadband connection, or even spy on your internet usage.

The 9 Acres That Saved Humanity

The BBC reports that Bletchley Park has been thrown a bone in the form of £330,000 to perform essential maintenance on what is possibly the most important and symbolic 9 acres of land anywhere on the planet.

Let's be clear about this: if it wasn't for the code breaking work carried out at Bletchley Park during WWII, we wouldn't now be speaking German as plenty of people think; we'd never have been born at all. England and English culture as it existed would have been utterly destroyed. As it was, after the victory of El Alamein, helped in major part by decrypts of Rommel's secret orders, the allies never lost a battle. We knew what the German high command was ordering before its field commanders did.

When I visited in 2005, Bletchley was in a serious state of decay. The famous huts, where Turing, Welchman, Knox and the others struggled to solve the greatest intellectual chalenge of the age, were falling down. Tony Sale, however, was just putting the finishing touches to a Colossus. Out of interest, the original Colossus was designed and by Gordon Welchman and Tommy Flowers, not Alan Turing.

On the tour I attended, someone asked if the machine works. Sale said that yes it does, and that though they ran it for the morning tour, it was now a little too warm to risk the machine's delicate thermionic valves. Now, I have as much religious belief as the keyboard in front of me, but due to a lack of lunch, dehydration and heat, when I suddenly heard the subframe cracking as it cooled, I swear I came the closest I've ever been to a genuine religious experience. Colossus may look like an overstuffed store room, but to me it's a thing of genuine beauty and wonder.

I love Bletchley Park; if you value the fact that you exist at all, so should you. So should the Lottery Heritage Fund. Bletchley should be a place of pilgrimage. It's where the modern age began and where the Nazis were defeated. Frankly, if my home was on fire right now, the only things I'd save would be my teddy (of course) and the pine cone I found on the path leading from Bletchley station.