Identity Cards Bill passes Lords & Commons with dubious compromise

The final vote on the Identity Cards Bill 2005 - Ayes 301 (including the Conservative front bench) Noes 84

Incredibly, both Houses of Parliament have voted for an amendment which means that you will still have to pay £30 and have your biometric details recorded on the centralised National Identity Register, even if you do not choose to be issued with an actual ID Card when you apply for a Passport (and pay the separate Passport fee).

This phony "compromise opt out" from having to get an ID card with a passport only applies until 1st January 2010 i.e. probably before the next General Election in May 2010.

It does not apply to anything except Passports, so foreigners applying for residence permits will be caught much earlier.

If the Government decides to sneakily Designated other documents like Driving Licences or Criminal Records Bureau checks (despite currently claiming to have no plans to do so), they will also not be exempt.

The politicians appear to be spinning the line thatif you do not have an ID Card, but you are registered on the NIR, that you will not be generating the tracking audit trail transactions.

This is, of course, hopelessly wrong, since any use of the National Identity Register Number or any "one to many" Biometric Verifdications against the central database (targether than the technologically easier "one to one" verifications of your Biometric Identifiers against what is stored on the ID SmartCard) will hopefully be recorded on the audit trail logfiles.

It seems unlikely that, for example, the e-borders programme, which is similar in concept to the US VISIT system, will eschew the chance to check your fingerprints or iris scans or facila biometrics aginst the central National Identity Register, even if you have an old style Passport or a new one but no ID Card per se.

The Police and intelligence agencies, and the vast number of other Government departments will still be able to access the data on the NIR, even if you have not been issued with an ID Card, or if you never use it in a Biometric Reader device.

The only advantage to not having an ID Card if you apply for a Passport, between now and 2010, is that the provisions in the Bill which relate to notification of change of name or address details or changes to other data on the Register, only apply to people to whom an ID card has been issued (voluntarily or by compulsion) .