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ID cards: the truth
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More Function Creep - Harriet Harman Suggests Downloading ID Database for Electoral RollHarriet Harman, minister for constitutional affairs displays utter ignorance of civil liberties, the capabilities of technology, and fundamental lack of concern about her colleagues'previous assurances to Parliament about how the Identity Register would be super secure and access to it would be strickly limited - 'download the NIR' indeed! 11 May 2006 From Speaking at a meeting organised by the Progress thinktank to discuss falling turnouts, Harriet Harman said the problem of maintaining up-to-date and accurate electoral rolls could be solved "at a stroke" by using the details held on the National Identity Register.
The Identity Cards Act, which was passed in March, only allows the information on the register to be used by departments and agencies for the purposes of preventing or detecting terrorism, organised crime and identity and benefit fraud.
"You could download [the NIR] and at a stroke you could sort out your registration in parliamentary elections," Ms Harman said on Tuesday. "But [since] some people are saying 'you keep picking new reasons for having NIR', I won't say that publicly."
A spokesman for the campaigning group No2ID.net said Ms Harman's suggestion was a "complete and utter betrayal" of the case the government had made in parliament for ID cards. "It utterly, utterly changes the function of the database," said Phil Booth.
"To take an identity register which you've said is purely for a very specific set of purposes, and then to turn it into this general purpose register that you use for everything, is a complete and utter betrayal of everything they've said in parliament."
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NO2ID campaign Defy ID network |
