Parliament recently passed some legislative “tools” to allow the authorities to impose fines on people for not updating their British ID Card—when and IF (don’t do it!) they get one. This just makes a mockery of the governments’ talk about ID cards being “voluntary.”
Opposition to, or at least suspicion of, the ID card scheme has bloomed greatly among the British public this year, and I am grateful to NO2ID colleague Ian for forwarding his latest press release which addresses this trend:
Home Secretary Alan Johnson plans to go ahead with the ID Cards scheme and the new database of personal information behind it, despite polls showing that 68% of the population think state databases already hold too much information about them, and 79% believing the £5bn cost would be better spent elsewhere. Ian Taylor, Dover Branch Co-ordinator of the NO2ID campaign, said: "The cards' appearance is a distraction from the real issues. This is another step towards the snooper state. Anyone accepting one of these cards will be fingerprinted and have their daily lives monitored via a £5bn database gathering details of how they use it. ID Card holders would be forced to report every change in their personal details for the rest of their life, and would never be allowed to hand the card back. Only three weeks ago the government enacted fines of up to £1000 for anyone losing an ID card, or failing to buy a new one every ten years.” Whitehall's identity cards scheme has no place in our country, and must be scrapped immediately.
On another, technical, note I was intrigued to learn from this post on the excellent Spy Blog that an ID card could conceivably make you a bomb target. Still want an ID Card? No thanks.
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