leyton.org

Once more unto the breach. The atrocious ID cards bill is once more before the house, this time with various amendments up for consideration after the House of Lords set into it. I’ve written before about the reasons the proposals are truly awful.

Whilst the Government has now removed the element of compulsion in the bill, there are still serious problems with what is proposed. Even without compulsion, I fear that the element of compulsion by “the back door” (sorry to use that horrible phrase) will be entered into as Government departments put bureaucracy in the way of anybody without the card. And as for the Identity Register, I shudder at the unparalleled level of information this would make available on the way we lead our lives. Even queries against the register would be recorded, so as more organisations start using it, peoples lives will lose much of their privacy.

So, as the vote is today, I’ve made use of writetothem.com, to send a fax through to my new MP, Mr Tom Harris. Regrettably he seems, according to theyworkforyou.com’s page on him to be strongly in favour of the proposal, so I have very little hope that he’ll pay any attention to my letter, much less take any of the points I make on board. I’ll transcribe any response I receive.

If you’ve not already done so, it’s not too late to make the case against ID cards. Check out no2id.net. Even if the legislation is passed, the battle is not over, and I shall certainly be doing everything I can to ensure that the project is cancelled before it ends up wasting billions of pounds that really could be much better spent.

My letter to Mr Harris is attached below.

Please note it’s better to write your own letter, rather than copying somebody elses (especially if it’s to the same MP: MP’s ignore carbon copy letters). So should you even be tempted to use this as a basis, note it’s very specific to me and my particular concerns and situation. I’d suggest casting you eyes over the reasons it’s a bad idea at no2id.net.

Dear Mr Harris,

I have recently moved to an address in your constituency, and as my elected representative, I am writing to request that you vote against the bill.

My previous MP, and your parliamentary colleague Ian Davidson, has directly expressed concern to me about the risk of serious cost overruns on this project, and others. The Home Office does not have a good pedigree - with substantially less complicated projects (such as the Passport Agency project, Child Support Agency and Libra Court System project) overrunning in cost and drawing significant criticism. The amendment shortly to come before the Commons seeks to ensure that all costing details are made available for proper scrutiny. I would therefore request you consider voting for this amendment.

Whilst I understand the bill under consideration has now been amended to remove the element of compulsion, that the ID card is to forced on people renewing passports, an organisational expectation of card availability could introduce compulsion by the back door.

As the director of an IT consultancy with experience of large and complicated technology projects, and direct experience with the proposed biometric systems, I have very serious concerns about the technology and proposed Identity Register. The Identity Register ironically introduces a far greater risk of identity fraud than a mere card, plus the complexity, risks and costs associated with it are seriously underestimated by the Home Office. Finally, it would track far more information than a mere register would, including - most concerning of all - an access audit trail which would enable organisations with access to the data to build up an unparalleled picture of individual lives.

I therefore request that you use your vote against this legislation.

Yours sincerely,

Richard Leyton

This entry was posted on Monday, February 13th, 2006 at 1:47 pm and is filed under Campaigns, Glasgow, Id Cards, Personal, Politics, UK. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.