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ID cards: the truth
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Lords Vote Against ID - But Make Crucial Concessions6 March 2006 The House of Lords has again recognised that to force anyone renewing or applying for a passport to also have to register for an ID card makes a mockery of the idea of this ID registration scheme being 'voluntary' - they've overturned this part of the Identity Cards Bill yet again. But unfortunately they've dropped their demand that the scheme should be fully costed and audited before it is implemented, and made other concessions to the Government. Now the Bill will go back to the House of Commons. http://www.spy.org.uk/spyblog/2006/03/lords_vote_on_the_identity_car.html It is true, that the Opposition won the only vote, on a motion about changing the inital compulsion by stealth, to compulsion later after a voluntary period, via the mechanism of forcing everyone who has to apply for or renew a passport to have far more details and biometrics than are needed for a Passport to be stored on the centralised National Identity Register ...
However, despite putting forward compelling arguments, the Opposition chickened out and accepted, without a vote, all 5 of the other Government rejection motions.
One of them was a minor amendment which achieved the same effect as an Opposition amendment of little consequence to do with somehow requiring that security of the database is required, something which is obvious, but which is unachievable in practice, especially through legislation.
So there is to be no proper detailed cost benefit analysis of the ID cards scheme by the National Audit Office, only the easliy circumvented "Dobson" amendment for a censored 6 monthy cost figure to be published, limited to only the Home Office costs and not across Government and the private sector as a whole.
Your personal National Identity Register data will be passed on to foreign Governments under the "Gateways" provided by the Anti-terrorism Crime and Security Act 2001.
The role of the the National Identity Scheme Commissioner is weakened , again with only a censored annual report to the Secretary of State, who also appoints this Commissioner, rather than an independent Commissoner appointed by the Crown and reporting independently to Parliament ...
... What is likely is that when, not if, the security breaches of the human and technical systems of the scheme occur, they will be supressed from public scrutiny on the grounds of "national security", to prevent political embarassment which should really llead to the resignation of the Home Secretary, who will, no doubt try to shift the blame onto someone else.
So much for transparency on costs or on the detailed operation of the scheme - it will all be censored.
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NO2ID campaign Defy ID network |
