Jacqui Smith can't wait..

Jaqui's print

Jacqui Smith says public demand means people will be able to pre-register for an ID card within the next few months.The cards will be available for all from 2012 but she said:
"I regularly have people coming up to me and saying they don't want to wait that long."

Phil Booth, national coordinator of the NO2ID campaign, said Jacqui Smith's claim that people were saying they wanted an ID card "beggared belief" and would "come back to haunt her".

Guido Fawkes tells us the following:

Jacqui Smith gave a speech today on ID cards to an audience invited by the Social Market Foundation, at the end of the event the glass she was drinking from during the Q & A was whisked away by a NO2ID sympathiser. The glass is now undergoing a technical process at an undisclosed location. This will not only identify Big Jacqui's fingerprints, it will allow them to create a plastic foil stamp that will enable anyone to leave her fingerprints behind. Last March German hackers cloned the German Interior Minister's fingerprints.

The picture above shows the glass sitting on top of the speech she has just delivered assuring us that biometric data will be secure. Hollow laughter.

In her speech Ms Smith rejected claims handing enrolment over to private firms would compromise security:

"Provided that it is conducted in a secure and trusted environment, by service providers accredited and verified by the IPS and to high and rigorously enforced standards, enrolment should be able to happen at the convenience of the customer - on the high street, at the nearest post office, or at the local shopping centre."

NO2ID tells us:

On 28th October the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith gave evidence to the Joint Committee on Human Rights. On the forthcoming communications data bill Smith struggled with both the English language and what communication data is when she said:
Open Rights Group
"if we face a situation as a government where both technology and our use of technology means that some of the most important capability that law enforcement uses at the moment is likely to be eroded, then we have to consider what is the most appropriate way to deal with that technologically (number one) and what are the appropriate legal safeguards to put around the way in which we deal with that in the future to safeguard that capability".

Ms Smith promised to expand on this in a consultation paper that she will publish in the New Year - let's hope she gets someone else to help her write it.

See Open Rights Group big picture FREEDOM NOT FEAR.