Due to the Lords-cave-in (”they’re not elected so they have no say”, but barely a third of the UK voted for the Government as is, due to the broken first-past-the-post system we’re stuck with) with some half-hearted compromise on a poor definition of ‘compulsion’, we’re now looking very clearly down the barrel of ID Cards being rolled out in this country.
But the battle is not over. Not by a long shot. Enter this nice piece of mathematics, showing the logistics required to even roll out the system across the UK. Of course, this is all assuming the system is fully operational and cost-effective, which I seriously doubt.
One of the biggest problems facing the anti-ID card campaign is that frequently encountered problem any grass-roots campaign faces: Sweeping apathy on the part of the Great British Public. “It won’t affect me”, “What have I got to worry about, I’ve done nothing wrong”, and “What harm is a bit of plastic” are standard retorts. Of course, that will probably change when the implications of the card are more widely understood, not least the obligations and penalties placed on the public at large, but most of all the significant costs involved - which the Government refuses to properly divulge citing “commercial confidence”, when it’s the public that is paying the bill through their taxes. no2id.net explains this in more detail, and this e-mail did the rounds recently, and succinctly explains the problems and issues.
I still remain convinced the biggest threat is the power to track accesses to the national identity register (ie. recording who has queried your information). This is woefully under-reported in the media, and will enable a very detailed picture to be built up on our lives by anybody with access to the database. We always assume it’s a benevolent thing to capture information, and assume the best of those accessing it. But it’s a huge honey-pot of information, that will create a significantly new risk of identity theft, and expose everybody in this country unnecessarily.
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