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0 pointsben_w4y ago0 comments

Roughly 20 years ago, there was a documentary on British TV about fake ID. They found that the technique used in the 1971 book The Day of the Jackal (find someone dead, get a copy of their birth certificate, bootstrap other ID from that) still worked.

They then demonstrated how you didn’t even need the person you were doing this to to be dead, as they got a provisional driving license in the name of David Blunkett. Who was the Home Secretary at the time. And is blind.

Apparently the UK police still use the Jackal method as of last year, though obviously no system can possibly prevent actions by its own enforcement body: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/dec/07/met-police-l...

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klyrs4y ago· 1 in thread

Sure, but that's tons of work and probably a felony. It took me about 10 minutes to come up with shitty low-res picture of a fake ID that facebook accepted. And for now, that doesn't seem like a significant legal risk.

ben_wOP4y ago

I wouldn’t want to rely on your idea not also being treated as a serious offence, even absent any new laws in the UK specifically about this. I mean, using a fake ID to get something you would otherwise not be entitled to does sound like “fraud” to me… but I’m not even close to being legally trained.

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