The Wardman Wire

This morning Jacqui Smith has announced changed proposals for ID cards, attempting to sugar the pill:

The government has set out changes to its planned identity scheme - including allowing people to use passports or driving licences as ID cards.

Most people will not now have to give their fingerprints when getting a passport until 2011/12 - three years later than had previously been planned.

And plans to force passport applicants to get an ID card have been dropped.

The exception will be airport and other workers in security-sensitive jobs who will need an ID card from 2009.

They will be compulsory for certain groups, and will then it will gradually become more and more difficult to live your life without one.

This is compulsion by stealth, as if we were all frogs in pans of water gradually being heated up to the boil, and it is both dishonest and despicable.

The best analogy I can think of is the PIN Numbers for your cash cards, where it has become more and more difficult to exist without a PIN number, never mind a cash card itself - unless you are willing to lose significant access to services.

This is the segment from Today this morning reporting this process.

They are trying to put out a line that they think public acceptance now matters. Bollocks.

From the BBC

The proposal had been that from January 2010 everyone getting, or renewing, a passport would have to get an identity card in addition to a passport.

And ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair had said that a major plank of Labour’s next election manifesto would be a bill to make it compulsory for everyone, irrespective of whether they get a passport or not, to get an ID card.

But now apparently:

But those timetables have slipped and Ms Smith says most people will not have to get an identity card and could use their biometric passport instead to prove who they are.

“While there are big advantages to making ID cards as widespread as possible, we need to be clear there is public acceptance,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“We need to be clear that the technology is there and, of course, Parliament would have the final decision as to whether or not, and when, entry on the identity register became compulsory.”

So there you have it boys and girls: you won’t have an ID Card, you will have an ID card attached to your passport instead and have to use that.

Big deal.

They should come straight out and say that they are planning to build and maintain the most detailed database of any country in Europe that has existed since the Stasi were closed down in East Germany.

Jacqui Smith - and this administration - need their political careers aborting for this.

Not only has the Blair/Brown administration shown themselves to be utterly incapable of running a system of this complexity (never mind that even contemplating building one is inimical to the values of our society), they have also shown themselves to be utterly indifferent to our rights and freedoms.

They are not planning consultation and debate; in the classis Alistair Campbell/Tony Blair style they are planning to use manipulation and misrepresentation as a way of sidelining and diverting their opponents until it is too late to stop their proposals.

Over the next couple of days I will be writing to my MP and various party leaders for formal statements of their positions on this, and posting the answers here.

Tags: jacqui smith, id cards, identity cards, dna database[tags]jacqui smith, id cards, identity cards, dna database[/tags]