ID cards

Anthony Horowitz
Polite society, to which obviously we all aspire, is full of little acts of ceremony, exchanging comments about the weather is typical, this is safe ground on which to begin a conversation with a stranger. However, time moves on and now data loss by government, the idiocy of the ID card system and national databases have become accepted ice-breakers, try it sometime!

The proof of this attitude change comes in off-hand references to these things in out-of-the-way places. The author Anthony Horowitz is screenwriter for the ITV drama about life in the UK during the Second World War called, 'Foyle's War'. In a newspaper article about his research for this programme, he gave some interesting background detail. Between 1939 and 1945, 178,000 new indictable offences were created, Horowitz quotes 'The People's War' by Angus Calder as his source for this.

just a number?

We have a report from ZDNet informing us that:

The Home Office had hoped biometric enrolment for ID cards would take place in post offices however, a report by the Business and Enterprise Committee found "many or even most identity services may well be too sophisticated to provide across the [post office] network and..................that the ability to identify increasingly sophisticated counterfeits and forgeries has become a specialist skill which Post Office staff, who handle a very wide range of business and general transactions, cannot be expected to have".

This will greatly increase the estimated cost of £5billion for the ID card scheme that the Tories and Lib Dems say they would scrap..

Then there is the Integrated Children's System (ICS) which replaces the 'at risk' register. Local authorities have spent the past four years implementing the Government's £72m ICS scheme amid threats that critical funding would be cut if they did not comply.

.

Both the Lib Dems and Tories have been making promising noises regarding the National Identity Register (NIR).The Register has an interesting discussion on some aspects of the NIR/ID/passport debate relating to the three main parties and also how confusing the subject is and that's not just for the politicians!

The passports we have containing a chip are called 'biometric' passports even though they do not contain any biometric data other than a photo. Under ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) rules, the passports we have at present are satisfactory. Also, as we have an opt out from EU asylum and immigration rules, we can manage as we are. Hence we need to have clear information from both the Lib Dems and the Conservatives as to their intentions regarding the passport database.