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The 10 greatest tech U-turns

Posted on 27 Oct 2009 at 14:26

7. The Government and ID cards

The UK ID cards fiasco hasn’t so much been a U-turn as a trip on the Magic Roundabout, with Government spin leaving even the scheme’s supporters reeling. It started as a 2001 masterplan to counter terrorism, identity fraud and illegal immigration, but has descended into a mess of mixed messages worthy of a PG Wodehouse farce.

In its early stages the scheme was supposed to be compulsory, with biometric information and contactless card reader technology giving it real teeth, but earlier this year Home Secretary Alan Johnson opted for the less controversial voluntary scheme that many think is worse than pointless. Even a trial version carried out with thousands of UK airport workers was scaled back when trade unions complained.

While fingerprint IDs are still “on the cards”, the idea of iris-scanning technology has been ditched, as have plans for hi-tech enrolment centres – in favour of the more humdrum registration at Boots or the Post Office. Very high tech.

So was the whole scheme simply a waste of money? The Government would say “no”, partly because it has established the database that was central to the scheme, but we’ll hold our breath as to how many people will voluntarily pay £30 for an ID card.

8. Facebook and its terms of service

In February this year, Facebook casually mentioned on its friendly blog that it was updating its Terms of Use. Little did it know the storm that was about to break.

The problem stemmed from the company deciding that, simply by using Facebook, users were granting it a perpetual licence to use their
posted content.

After the initial backlash, founder Mark Zuckerberg had to step in to clarify, claiming that because the information was shared between users, “even if one person deactivates their account, their friend still has a copy of that message. We think this is the right way for Facebook to work.”

Unfortunately, the site’s users didn’t, and only two days later the company was backtracking faster than David Cameron after a youth-targeted radio interview. “Going forward, we’ve decided to take a new approach towards developing our terms,” declared Zuckerberg.

“Our next version will be a substantial revision from where we are now. It will reflect the principles I [recently] described around how people share and control their information, and it will be written clearly in language everyone can understand. Since this will be the governing document that we’ll all live by, Facebook users will have a lot of input in crafting these terms.”

Having toyed with dictatorship, Facebook was once again determined to be your cuddly friend. Bless.