National Postcodes to be introduced

ardmacha

MBSnr wrote: »

I'm not sure it's ignorance.... The standard 1st question to anyone tends to be "What is your postcode?" Of course having an Eircode to tell them isn't going to help unless they incorporate it into their systems. But being as most of the people phoning them will be from the UK, I can't see many companies, like VAX, bothering.

It wouldn't be rocket science to parse the phone number ringing you and structure your questions according to that, this would be called "customer service".

Trouwe Ier

The Committee is due to discuss the bill (in some detail, given its brevity) on Wednesday, 17th June.

Dé Céadaoin/Wednesday, 17/06/2015

Communications, Energy and Natural Resources (Select sub) CR4, LH 2000 9.30 a.m. (T)
AGENDA: Communications Regulation (Postal Services) (Amendment) Bill 2015
Session A: 9.30 a.m.
[Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources]
Session B: 12.15 p.m.
[Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources]/

I could find no information on the next stage after.....

The Cush

Trouwe Ier wrote: »

I could find no information on the next stage after.....

The weekly agenda is agreed and published the previous Friday. Further stages of the bill appear in the schedule once the previous stage is completed.

clewbays

Interesting point made by the Minister in his opening speech:

Research suggests that, by 2020, the value of the digital economy will have risen to 10% of GDP or over €21 billion.

In that context a country cannot function without a method for identifying addresses in a unique manner. The increased efficiency and boosted competitiveness will be a much needed stimulus for the economy and should save rural dwellers most in their pockets.

clewbays

clewbays wrote: »

Interesting point made by the Minister in his opening speech:

Research suggests that, by 2020, the value of the digital economy will have risen to 10% of GDP or over €21 billion.

In that context a country cannot function without a method for identifying addresses in a unique manner. The increased efficiency and boosted competitiveness will be a much needed stimulus for the economy and should save rural dwellers most in their pockets.

I assume that he is talking about the extra (as in driver lost) costs of finding that house in the remote part of "baile what the hell it's called" is not passed onto the customer.

flutered

Deleted User wrote: »

I assume that he is talking about the extra (as in driver lost) costs of finding that house in the remote part of "baile what the hell it's called" is not passed onto the customer.

when one buys something on line, be it from china oz etc it has postage added, oe on most cases a set cost, how will this save the consumer dosh, it was ste up with the intention of making revenues job easier, nothing else

Sam Russell

flutered wrote: »

when one buys something on line, be it from china oz etc it has postage added, oe on most cases a set cost, how will this save the consumer dosh, it was ste up with the intention of making revenues job easier, nothing else

It was also set up to create a revenue stream from post codes. It is obvious random codes maximises this aspect.

SpaceTime

Of course it's passed to the customer. Delivery to Ireland is often much more expensive than elsewhere. I know online businesses in Ireland who have massive issues with this.

It's bad enough bring an island with limited access to international road networks other than via ferries but adding utterly ridiculous addresses to that doesn't exactly help!

Sam Russell

SpaceTime wrote: »

Of course it's passed to the customer. Delivery to Ireland is often much more expensive than elsewhere. I know online businesses in Ireland who have massive issues with this.

It's bad enough bring an island with limited access to international road networks other than via ferries but adding utterly ridiculous addresses to that doesn't exactly help!

And now adding a ridiculous post code will not improve matters. It will be an additional cost that could have been free, if only it had been better designed.

ukoda

Sam Russell wrote: »

And now adding a ridiculous post code will not improve matters. It will be an additional cost that could have been free, if only it had been better designed.

It will require an initial investment to add the code to route planning, Nightline seem to be only too happy to make this investment because they are bright enough to know that in the long run it will reduce their costs.

Other such companies are being a bit slow to realise this, but it's only a matter of time. Because at the end of day you'd want to be incredibly stupid not to realise you could save a fortune from this code even if you have to invest in new tech and pay for a database. It's called a cost benefit analysis, something the FTA Ireland don't have a handle on yet apparently.

GJG

TheBustedFlush wrote: »

So what exactly did get said today then?

"They all had a bit of a rant" is somewhat dismissive and ignorant of any genuine concerns that might be held by people or is that a standard response of anyone who wants to see legislation that benefits them pass through the Dail quickly with the least scrutiny possible?

What's interesting is that the Department - and the government by default it would seem - never seemed to consider that the creation of a unique identifier postcode system would have any implications for data privacy, so much so, they didn't even to see it as a possible requirement or criteria to consider for the code design when seeking submissions. Bidders were simply and deliberately told to submit a code design that would uniquely identify each and every address on its own without the need for any added information, and without possible protections of that address identity given how it might be subsequently used by other parties.

And with belated hindsight, they're now hoping to rush through the necessary legislation to cover off potential abuse and encounter as few objections as possible.

It's sloppy, unprofessional, and not worthy of a properly functioning Irish government department. A department that appears to be regularly subject to the preys and whims of erstwhile advisers and vested public sector interests rather than operating as a robust organisation run by a cadre of informed, diligent and conscientious public officials working on behalf of the state and all of the people.

Or maybe that's just another "bit of a rant"......

This is referred to over and over, but nobody seems able to specify what the 'implications' actually are. Can you tell us what implications you are imagining (rather than just saying ''wooooo, there will be implications') of being able to uniquely identify properties in a systematic way.

Before you start, you might consider that it is already possible to uniquely identify every single property in the UK (including the north) by simply combining the postcode and house number, (every single property has both); so whatever implications you are imagining must either already be happening there.

Impetus

Eircode will not work in rural areas where there is no road name or name to a house or farm. It will be impossible to identify the building in question for the search/code lookup form. Unless the database is populated with the names of the occupants of each house. Accumulating this in a database connected to the internet is a total breach of privacy – especially when it is hackable by the unsavoury spying agencies.

The US federal government recently announced that data on about 4 million employees was stolen – they blamed the Chinese. About a week later they decided to make the disclosure more honest admitting that up to 14 million employees’ data was stolen. Even the social security numbers were not encrypted.

Database compilations, especially those incorporating personal information, are ideal for spear fishing attacks. These involve emails that are customised with personal data which connect with the addressee’s individual circumstances. Stolen databases can be enhanced with additional information such as email addresses – by using search engine algorithms to search through postings on the net, using the data one already stole, to refine the search. For most people there is probably a 50% chance of finding a valid email address for them. The uninformed user who is fooled by the specially customized email is encouraged to click on a link in the email. Invariably this causes malware to download - perhaps a software keystroke logger or whatever to steal data from later sessions - such as those involving online shopping, e banking (ie those banks who do not use security cards and card readers to authorize each access). Many banks just ask for the 2nd, 4th and 5th etc character of a memorable word of number. All you need is to capture the data sent on half a dozen login sessions and you know the entire "secret code". It doesn't matter that the connection with the bank is encrypted, because the login data you enter is being stolen at keyboard level - before it is sent to the bank or other entity.

The Eircode concept of giving everybody a unique code, and no standardised road name and building number within say a 4 or 5 digit postal district, was broken from the start. It has not been thought through. Those responsible for same should resign / shut up shop.

ukoda

Impetus wrote: »

Eircode will not work in rural areas where there is no road name or name to a house or farm. It will be impossible to identify the building in question for the search/code lookup form. Unless the database is populated with the names of the occupants of each house. Accumulating this in a database connected to the internet is a total breach of privacy – especially when it is hackable by the unsavoury spying agencies.

The US federal government recently announced that data on about 4 million employees was stolen – they blamed the Chinese. About a week later they decided to make the disclosure more honest admitting that up to 14 million employees’ data was stolen. Even the social security numbers were not encrypted.

Database compilations, especially those incorporating personal information, are ideal for spear fishing attacks. These involve emails that are customised with personal data which connect with the addressee’s individual circumstances. Stolen databases can be enhanced with additional information such as email addresses – by using search engine algorithms to search through postings on the net, using the data one already stole, to refine the search. For most people there is probably a 50% chance of finding a valid email address for them. The uninformed user who is fooled by the specially customized email is encouraged to click on a link in the email. Invariably this causes malware to download - perhaps a software keystroke logger or whatever to steal data from later sessions - such as those involving online shopping, e banking (ie those banks who do not use security cards and card readers to authorize each access). Many banks just ask for the 2nd, 4th and 5th etc character of a memorable word of number. All you need is to capture the data sent on half a dozen login sessions and you know the entire "secret code". It doesn't matter that the connection with the bank is encrypted, because the login data you enter is being stolen at keyboard level - before it is sent to the bank or other entity.

The Eircode concept of giving everybody a unique code, and no standardised road name and building number within say a 4 or 5 digit postal district, was broken from the start. It has not been thought through. Those responsible for same should resign / shut up shop.

There are already hundreds of databases that have people's unique names and addresses and lots more info. Eircode doesn't add to that risk.

Impetus

ukoda wrote: »

There are already hundreds of databases that have people's unique names and addresses and lots more info. Eircode doesn't add to that risk.

It does, because Eircode is supposed to be universal with 100% coverage of buildings. You still have not stated how you can identify a particular farm on a search form for Eircode, especially if the farm has no name itself, and up to now the "townland" was the most granular pointer available.

Increasing granularity increases risk on a geometric scale.

ukoda

Impetus wrote: »

It does, because Eircode is supposed to be universal with 100% coverage of buildings. You still have not stated how you can identify a particular farm on a search form for Eircode, especially if the farm has no name itself, and up to now the "townland" was the most granular pointer available.

Increasing granularity increases risk on a geometric scale.

It doesn't.

Ask the farmer for his eircode and you've identified him for your form.

Impetus

ukoda wrote: »

It doesn't.

Ask the farmer for his eircode and you've identified him for your form.

That is one direction only, and involves the "ask" which is expensive in terms of sending out forms, call centre, whatever. Chances are the farmer will not remember or want to remember/handover the code - which leaves you with a blank field in the database entry. I wouldn't be surprized if farmers' groups will object to yet another code - which can be used to translate to a lat/long co-ordinate, for the place they live.

Google street view can drive down city roads and streets and photograph house numbers / names, and their note their respective co-ordinates, as well as their WiFi Mac addresses, and even perhaps their IP addresses which are unique to each WiFi device/internet connection. They can't generally get much on a rural towland road, because of the absence of house numbers, house/farm names, and the farmhouse WiFi is probably out of range of the Google street view, especially in urban environments, can use their vehicle monitoring devices to record ID info off the air. By comparing the IP address from the street view drive around snoop of the WiFi equipment, they could for example tell the exact address from where each Google non-rural search comes from. Google is being given access to Eircode, and this will allow them to enhance the precision of their snooping database.

ukoda

Impetus wrote: »

That is one direction only, and involves the "ask" which is expensive in terms of sending out forms, call centre, whatever. Chances are the farmer will not remember or want to remember/handover the code - which leaves you with a blank field in the database entry. I wouldn't be surprized if farmers' groups will object to yet another code - which can be used to translate to a lat/long co-ordinate, for the place they live.

Google street view can drive down city roads and streets and photograph house numbers / names, and their note their respective co-ordinates, as well as their WiFi Mac addresses, and even perhaps their IP addresses which are unique to each WiFi device/internet connection. They can't generally get much on a rural towland road, because of the absence of house numbers, house/farm names, and the farmhouse WiFi is probably out of range of the Google street view, especially in urban environments, can use their vehicle monitoring devices to record ID info off the air. By comparing the IP address from the street view drive around snoop of the WiFi equipment, they could for example tell the exact address from where each Google non-rural search comes from. Google is being given access to Eircode, and this will allow them to enhance the precision of their snooping database.

Right so you're very worried about privacy from eircode yet in the same breath you say no one will use it anyway.

google has had access to the geo directory since 2009 which has every address and geo coordinate for every house in the country, granted 30% of those addresses aren't unique (although the entry is unique as it's got a unique geo coordinate) , so all eircode is doing is bringing 30% of Ireland in line with the rest of the world by giving them a unique address.

Impetus

ukoda wrote: »

Right so you're very worried about privacy from eircode yet in the same breath you say no one will use it anyway.

google has had access to the geo directory since 2009 which has every address and geo coordinate for every house in the country, granted 30% of those addresses aren't unique (although the entry is unique as it's got a unique geo coordinate) , so all eircode is doing is bringing 30% of Ireland in line with the rest of the world by giving them a unique address.

Correction : Eircode is not a postcode. It is not giving "farmers" or others a unique address. It is appending a code to each "address" to enable corrupt and otherwise people in power to get the victim's lat/long co-ordinates without involving the person in entering a 20 digit number - being the lat/long of their land/premises.

I am not worried at all about eircode and my privacy. I decided to up and out of the place over 20 years ago, when I saw the mess that the permanent and political governments were making of the place.

I regret to say that I have seen no improvement in the quality of administration.ie in the interim.

ukoda

Impetus wrote: »

Correction : Eircode is not a postcode. It is not giving "farmers" or others a unique address. It is appending a code to each "address" to enable corrupt and otherwise people in power to get the victim's lat/long co-ordinates without involving the person in entering a 20 digit number - being the lat/long of their land/premises.

I am not worried at all about eircode and my privacy. I decided to up and out of the place over 20 years ago, when I saw the mess that the permanent and political governments were making of the place.

I regret to say that I have seen no improvement in the quality of administration.ie in the interim.

Victim? The people in power will use eircode to make victims out of people? Victims of what? Victims of getting caught for tax fraud? Non payment of charges? Because I'm perfectly ok with people getting caught for that and I wouldn't call them a victim.

Impetus

ukoda wrote: »

Victim? The people in power will use eircode to make victims out of people? Victims of what? Victims of getting caught for tax fraud? Non payment of charges? Because I'm perfectly ok with people getting caught for that and I wouldn't call them a victim.

The geodirectory had all the elements necessary to identify each property and find out people not paying for property tax or water charges etc. By victim I mean victims of data breaches. Victims of foreign intelligence agencies, of so-called friendly states, who in my experience have no problem accessing private information, often held on government or telecommunications databases in IRL and elsewhere.

Airlines that give credit card companies details of your flight - not just the cost - but the origin and destination, locator codes. This includes Aer Lingus and Ryanair. I have no problem with these data being sent to a company payment card, where the flight is paid for by somebody else. But when I buy a ticket from Dublin to Paris, it is my business.

Ditto for car rental companies. We have two main payment card operators who almost certainly allow intelligence agences warrant-less access to their firehose of data. This is not part of a liberal society. It do not want my world or anybody else's world to not so slowly decline to a Hitleristic dictatorship, where people were employed to spy on their neighbours, and record every movement, (this used to happen in former East Germany until 1989, when DDR became part of DE).

The Eircode will update Hitler's notebook files technology to the 21st century, and let holders of data do as they wish with personal information.

And as I said before the company charged with Eircode implementation is a major supplier of the Anglo-Saxon intelligence gathering agencies.

MBSnr

^^^
Wrong forum.
Conspiracy and tin foil hat posts this way

---

>

Impetus

MBSnr wrote: »

^^^
Wrong forum.
Conspiracy and tin foil hat posts this way

---

>

In what way wrong forum? One is pointing out the security risks of the proposed Eircode. Which is far more serious than your misconceived frivolous "contribution" to the thread.

oscarBravo

Impetus wrote: »

One is pointing out the security risks of the proposed Eircode.

I'm not seeing security risks being pointed out; I'm seeing worst-case scenarios being cited as probabilities, without any regard for comparative worst-case scenarios in a world without eircodes.

If your argument is that bad things could theoretically happen, therefore eircodes must be banned at all costs, I can only assume that you've been campaigning vigorously for years to have cars banned.

my3cents

Impetus wrote: »

In what way wrong forum? One is pointing out the security risks of the proposed Eircode. Which is far more serious than your misconceived frivolous "contribution" to the thread.

Wrong website you don't even live in Ireland.

MBSnr

Impetus wrote: »

In what way wrong forum? One is pointing out the security risks of the proposed Eircode. Which is far more serious than your misconceived frivolous "contribution" to the thread.

Let's recap. Your contribution mentioned Hitler and Eircode in the same sentence. Then you implied it would be like East Germany.

I think my post was correct.

Trouwe Ier

I am a bit taken aback by the depth of feeling some of us posting on this forum. The frequency of twitter exchanges on the subject has not abated for months and is bordering on the obsessive.

I worked in front-line service provision using UK cluster-based post codes for nine years and they were a God send. I appreciate fully, their benefits. However, when I crossed the border, instead of going to Mr. Paddy or Sammy Bloggs, 53 Bally...... Road BT99 4AH, I found myself being delayed constantly trying to find "House Name", Dublin Road, Limerick or to take a real life example, Mr. Joe Bloggs, Ballynagarde, Ballyneety, Co. Limerick: a townland that seems to be bigger than the city itself and also has a number of spelling variations. Other large and populous townlands in Co. Limerick include Lisnagry, Richill, Robertstown, Nantinan etc: all of which I've gone around in circles.

I would much prefer myself that roads were named and houses were numbered but to quote a horrible phrase, "we are where we are" and whilst not perfect, the individual identifiers seem to be a necessary evil as a legacy of the way rural Ireland has evolved.

Let's not knock it till we've tried it. There will be faults and it will be too late to turn the clock back but if it helps to save one life or cuts costs for the digital economy then that's a good result.

As a city dweller, I live in a numbered house in a named street in a postally named suburb of Limerick. As I've said previously, anyone who knows my address can find and view images showing my house, see what car I had in 2009 and who collected my bins. He or she can use the NTA's journey planner to find out how long it will take to get to my house and when to do it. Electronic data is held showing my name and address by my employer, the Revenue Commissioners, the HSE, my GP, UPC, Eircom, Electric Ireland, Gas Networks Ireland, my house and car insurers, the Road Safety Authority, the City & County Council, Irish Water, my former employers, my pension fund, my bank, my old school, TV Licencing, my pharmacist and so on. If any smart alec hacks into any of these databases, they can find out a hell of a lot more about me than they can from my eircode. I am not sure how the addition of an Eircode increases my vulnerability/

I am not a saint but I do pay all my taxes (PAYE and LPT) so if there are domestic dwellings out there that have been under the radar or piggy-backing on close neighbouring dwellings and if the issuing of an Eircode means that those of us who comply have fewer dodgers to subsidise then that is a great result as far as I am concerned.

One small and respectful correction: East Germany was Honecker, not Hitler!

SpaceTime

I tend to agree, re numbering houses here is a tad ambitious to say the least and would result in political issues and all sorts of nonsense.

If these things work, they work

Bayberry

Trouwe Ier wrote: »

Let's not knock it till we've tried it. There will be faults and it will be too late to turn the clock back but if it helps to save one life or cuts costs for the digital economy then that's a good result.

You seem to be buying into the line that opposition to eircodes is equivalent to opposition to postal codes. It's not. While some of the more what you might call "memorable", contributions come from poosters that seem to be opposed to anything that has any kind of government input, there are many people who think the random allocation of eircodes is not only stupid, it's wrongheaded, and will increase costs for both the public and for the distribution sector, and will also fail to deliver some of the benefits that a modern postcode could potentially deliver. The only entities that will benefit from the random allocation of postcodes are the companies being paid to run eircode, and possibly An Post, who might have either delayed their competition a bit, or at least increased their costs.

There are 2 possible outcomes to eircodes - either they'll trundle along in the background being ignored by 90% of the population 90% of the time, because eircodes don't actually do the "non-Post/deliveries" things that post-codes are used for in other contries, without signifigicant additional costs, or they'll turn out to be a complete bust, and one or the other party manifestoes in 2021 will be promising to scrap eircodes and set up a proper 20th century postcode, jist like every other country in Europe (that will eventually be implemented by 2032).

The Minister reckons that there's a 3rd possibility - that Eircodes will help the "digital economy" grow to 10% of GDP. Frankly, he's even more delusional that Mr TiinFoilHat up above.

dr.fuzzenstein

SpaceTime wrote: »

I tend to agree, re numbering houses here is a tad ambitious to say the least and would result in political issues and all sorts of nonsense.

If these things work, they work

This is Ireland, there is always chance of agreement, but as soon as there's two or more people in the room, those chances usually diminish pretty rapidly.
I bet this is the only country were the introduction of postcodes could lead to widespread arguments, political squabbling and the looney fringe going into overdrive about Isis Nazis armed with machine guns stalking the streets should this come to pass.
It's a feckin' postcode, relaxe-vu.

Again, only people who live in one-off housing who may not want authorities to know about certain tv license, property tax, social welfare or planning permission "irregularities", or they don't want to be identified because the grey aliens will come after them again, which they will, but only after certain mushrooms.

antoinolachtnai

There is no question a code is a good idea.

The problem is that eircode is not a good code for a number of reasons. The fundamental problem is that the code is designed to mean nothing, or as little as possible.

There is a serious technical problem with the code. The whole code design begs the question. This is accepted by the eircode consortium.

The result is that a lot of eircodes are going to be distributed wrongly and a lot of people will end up with the wrong codes. There is no plan for making sure that eircodes will be distributed correctly.

There are also serious problems with privacy. Privacy was not a consideration in the design.