Sadly it was inevitable: the House of Lords had to compromise on ID cards with the Armstrong amendment. That amendment made passports a designated document for which an ID card was mandatory after 2010.
Bummer. But the fight goes on - as the public become more aware of the cost and civil liberties implications hostility will grow. Geeklawyer and NO2ID will make sure of that.
If you turned me upside down and shook me, enough information would drop off to render an ID card otiose. So clearly ID cards aren’t designed for me. The kind of people they are designed either won’t carry them or will carry fraudulent ones. Think they’re too hard to forge..oh give it about a fortnight and there will be a thriving black market. So, its another good way of generating tax revenue then.
The campaign against ID cards is not really about the card, it’s about the surveillance database behind it the card is merely the front end. A voluntary card would be fine and a card doesn’t need to have the mass of details the government proposes to link to it. It will eventually track nearly everything you do when you shop bank travel talk email socialise vote get sick etc etc.
None of that can currently be found on you if I tip you upside down and shake. What I would find would be the merest appetiser to the government. They have grand plans for the stunning breadth and depth of information to be held. In the name of fighting the panic of the day: terrorism, crime, paedophiles, double parking, whatever else.
So only a matter of time before they bin the card and link the surveillance datebase to a retina scan then.
yup, then terrorists will get retina swaps - ala ‘Minority Report’