back to article ID Card scheme banking on 28 million volunteers

Government claims that the ID Card scheme will be self-financing are "completely deluded", the Tories have claimed today. Shadow home secretary Chris Grayling launched the attack as the Home Office released its twice-yearly estimates on the multibillion-pound project's cost to the Exchequer. His opposite number on the …

COMMENTS

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  1. Georgees

    Nail

    Meet coffin.

  2. Catkins
    Linux

    Not even 2000

    Actually, 2000 people haven't volunteered for a card. 2000 have emailed asking for further details and an application form. Some will be die-hard card supporters but many of the 2000 will be genuinely curious, a lot will be No2ID people looking for ammunition, and I suspect a lot of those email addresses won't be kosher.

    I'd be astonished if any more than a small minority of enquiries are converted into card applications. It's easy to put your email address in a box, it's another thing to weigh up the merits of the scheme (which are?) fill in the forms and write out a nice fat cheque.

  3. Nomen Publicus
    FAIL

    Really bad promotion?

    The Home Office web pages STILL do not have any useful info about the trial in Greater Manchester. The best you can do is "register an interest". However, if you do that, your information is "shared" with a company called "Rufus Leonard" who is apparently some kind of "brand & digital media consultancy".

    An interesting security strategy, share personal info with a 3rd party from the very start.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    DO NOT WANT!

    That is all

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Age of Mass Surveillance

    ID cards, National Identity Register (NIR), ISA screening, CRB checks, the census - all bricks in the wall of a massive covert program of mass-surveillance.

    Don't you see how those who stand to benefit from repression are justifying unwarranted and unprecedented levels of state backed intrusion by pushing an agenda of threat - initially islamic terrorism, then peodophilia and presently "domestic extremists"...?

  6. Paul Uszak

    Luvly Goobly...

    It makes me pleased to hear stuff like this. Crackpot public IT projects are just licences to print money for the IT suppliers. I can just imagine all the cancellation and loss of profits clauses being written into the current contracts.

    I just wish I was still supplying the public sector - I need a holiday somewhere warm...

  7. Martin 47
    Thumb Down

    Of the 2000 convinced so far

    one has to ask, why?

  8. Eden

    Self funding

    No no he doesn't understand, the funding doesn't come from people paying from the cards, it comes from them selling every joe bloggs access to all the lovely valuable data on the database.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    hmmm

    You can't cancel it as im hoping it will buy me a new car in the next few months ;-)

    Seriously though it will get to a certain peak and the gov will end up saying everyone has to have one at all times.

    Then in a few years when the tech allows they will be fitted with trackers so we know where everyone is all of the time, christ imagine the crime rate when that happens.

    People will always need to carry them, as if they don't they face a stint in clink until its proven who they are, traffic reports would become more accurate as you would know how cramped the next tube is thats coming along as well, though you wouldn't want to use the tube as only the people who are hiding from being tracked would be going down there. Speeding would hardly need any enforcement as the tracking would show what speed people were doing, thus if they go past a certain limit in a certain area they are clinking themselves... And while all this is going on i still have a job thats never going to go away, ahh the irony :-) who says there are no good jobs left in IT, let me just get my hot cocoa and marshmallows and put my feet up infront of the fire in my nice country cottage after driving home in the new company RS6 Avant :-p

  10. The BigYin
    Thumb Down

    Pseudo-voluntary

    "Johnson has ruled out making ID Cards compulsory."

    He doesn't need to, they will be de factor compulsory as they will be the only accepted form of ID.

    Back accounts aren't compulsory, but you try getting a job or paying bills without one and see how far you get.

    We do not need ID cards, nor do we need the database. You think it's bad now when the DVLA screws your entitlements, imagine what life will be like when the same set of muppets screws your ID records! *YOU* will not own your house, whatever ID record is pointed at in the DB will. And if that is wrong...good luck. The DVLA mentality will prevail; "The computer is right, you are wrong, kindly piss off".

    Quite when we became a nation of criminals that needs constant tagging and monitoring is beyond me. Or maybe it's because our MPs are crooks. Perhaps they assume that the rest of the nation are amoral, dishonest, dishonourable and repugnant scum like they themselves are.

  11. Jason Bloomberg Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    Johnson rocks

    It's just a shame it won't come to Johnson seeing the reality of his wild imaginations. Keep digging the hole while giving more cause for the opposition to be elected.

    Does New Labour have an official "suicide policy" or is demonstration of nonsensical delusion purely on an ad-hoc basis ?

  12. MinionZero
    Big Brother

    "Johnson has ruled out making ID Cards compulsory" ...

    "Johnson has ruled out making ID Cards compulsory" ... Yet.

    Because changing the rules along the way is aways their political game plan with every political move they make, ID cards are just one chess game they have on going at the moment. They then just feature creep everything until they get what they originally wanted all along. Being two faced Machiavellian lying manipulators is as easy as breathing for politicians and they are bloody good at it.

  13. Scott 19
    FAIL

    NuLie-bour

    And this is why the current bunch of self deluded self promoting idiots in charge of Prison.Gov.UK just show there idiotic double thinking, I'VE ALREADY PAID FOR THIS WITH MY TAXES, WHY SHOULD I HAVE TO PAY FOR IT AGAIN?

    The worrying thing is that to actually pay for this they will have to make them compulsary.

    NuLie-bour jsut accept this is a fail and scrape it, the only people that stick with plans that don't work are pig headed, idiotic, self deluded meglom....oh wait, never mind.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    petition

    is there one up on uk.gov already? if not I wonder if we can get 28 million people to tell sad sack Brown fo F OFF!

    we need some of the three stooges as images, we have a comedy government

  15. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Thumb Down

    This must be Broons Millenium Dome

    In the way that Blair promised Heseltine that they would continue with it if Labour (sorry NuLabour) was elected otherwise all the construction companies would walk away from it.

    Nothing much short of a promise from an incoming (still unelected) PM to an outgoing PM or senior minister could continue to animate this decrepit, misconceived hateful shambles of a project.

    226 days to go.

  16. Eponymous Cowherd
    FAIL

    There aren't that many stupid people

    The official number of really stupid people in the UK is only 9,562,122, which is 1/3 of that required.

  17. Cameron Colley

    Of course we'll volounteer.

    When we find: you can't get a job without one (anti-terror and anti-money laundering checks, etc.), you can't rent or buy "adult" media or products without one, you're not allowed to buy your alcohol allowance without one, if found without one in the street the police will have reason to arrest you on suspicion of being an illegal immigrant/terrorist/sex-offender, ...

    Legislation for businesses and marketing to the people, along with a corrupt police force, will herald our wak towards the final solution.

  18. Jimmy Floyd
    Grenade

    Won't somebody think of the children?

    But don't you see? ID cards will stop terrorists (unless they do something we weren't expecting).

  19. Shane 8
    FAIL

    The future...

    More ideas for stolen identities and fraud......GG!

  20. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    I'll carry an ID card.....

    NOT!

    I don't care what I'd be missing out on, I won't carry one, register for one, pay for one or acknowledge one. Not now, not in 2012, not ever.

    These fuckers need to be shown the door.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    And another thing...

    If it costs £30 to buy the card, how much are the robbing bastards going to charge every time you move house or change name ?

    And what happens when replicas start to flood the market ? Will they all be replaced ? Who foots the bill then ?

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Jason Dee Helsinki/Bournemouth.

    Lets face it, when the British Passport Authority pushed up the price of replacement passports to 143€ + 30€ DHL courier fee the British Government underhandedly knew exactly what they were doing here. Pushing more and more Brits to pay for an ID card by default. Cos if it costs 173€ everytime you need a new passport it becomes a no-brainer! Voluntarily applying for cards, my a**!

    I happened to lose my passport in Finland where I am also a resident and I went to the passport department of Helsinki British Embassy and they tell me I can no longer get one from them, guess what? I have to send to GERMANY for a new passport at the cost of 173 flippin' euros!!!!

    A new Finnish Bio-metric passport costs 45€ - Me thinks a lot of ex-pats like me will be looking at ID cards (which by the way are probably useless to travel in Europe as Britain is not a SHENGEN member country) and/or like me, possibly even considering dual-nationality in Finland for a cheaper Passport option in future!!!!!!

    RIP OFF BRITAIN FORCES NATION INTO ID SCHEME - is the headline I can see next!

  23. adam payne

    Another waste of money

    Here we are again with the Labour government spouting figures that just aren't true. The ID card scheme will not stop terrorists or stop illegal illegal immigrants from working.

    The whole scheme is a colossal waste of our money and even if it's scrapped it'll still cost us lots in fees.

  24. Richard Wharram

    Biometric Passports

    I wrote to my MP about the lunacy of the ID Cards & Biometrics in general and she informed me that the scheme could not be stopped as biometric passports would be required for travel to the USA. Anyone heard of this ?

  25. Ashley Stevens

    Passports

    I suspect the 28 million figure comes from the estimate of how many people will apply for passports? ID cards will become compulsory for anyone applying for a passport. However since it's not compulsory to have a passport, the government can still claim that ID cards are voluntary. Thus, passport holders will become voluntary ID card holders.

  26. kevin biswas
    Big Brother

    Echos of the poll tax here.....

    28 million ? That is most of the UK adult population. So basically every adult, rich or poor is expected to 'ahem' volunteer (in a weirdly compulsory sort of way, no doubt) to pay a flat rate 30 quid in order to prove to the govt they exist ? Remember the poll tax ? I think the "Can't pay Won't pay" banner might still be gathering dust in my attic somewhere. Might be time to fish it out.

  27. Elmer Phud
    FAIL

    The Alternative?

    If it is abandoned what will the Tories replace it with?

    They used to be very big on surveillance and CCTV, it's odd that the party of Loranorder seem reluctant to keep tabs on the great unwashed and people coming from ex- Russkie countries and anyone else they think is a threat.

    Or is it that once everything is in the great cloud of someone elses servers we wiil just be sent the cards in the post labelled as "Personal Entitlement and National Identity Scheme".

  28. Anonymous Coward
    Big Brother

    As a well known Royle family member might say...

    Voluntary - my arse!

    It may be "voluntary" but it wont be voluntary for too much longer. If you don't have one then you obviously have something to hide or you have a 'none' job and so are of no account unless you work in the city or finance.....

  29. Adair Silver badge

    Hide a lie with a bit of truth

    @Biometric Passports by Richard Wharram

    It's a lie wrapped up in a half truth. As I understand it EU passports, and presumably all passports, are supposed to meet a new international standard which involves storing biometric details in the passport chip, i.e. your photograph and, in due course, your fingerprints, plus all the data that is already printed in the passport. That's it. Anything 'extra' has been slipped in under the pretext of fulfilling those basic requirements.

    The Govt. plan to get us onto the Identity Register by compelling us to supply lots of extra information when we apply for a passport, though there is no requirement for this information for the passport itself.

  30. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Passports and the USA

    Richard Wharram said "I wrote to my MP about the lunacy of the ID Cards & Biometrics in general and she informed me that the scheme could not be stopped as biometric passports would be required for travel to the USA."

    Your MP is a lying idiot. ID cards have nothing to do with passports or entry to the USA. The US Immigration nazis is forcing visitors to have passports containing a chip with the holder's photo. That's not "biometrics", though the lying tossers at the Home Office and Passport Service are claiming that it is.

    Paris icon 'cos she's a walking identity register from all the DNA she's collected.

  31. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    @Richard Wharram

    I used to work (indirectly) for the IPS

    With regards to the question about Biometric passports for the US, The US runs a Visa Waiver Program for certain countries (including the UK). There are conditions attached to who's allowed through. One of those conditions is that it must be machine readable (pre-biometric ones were). Recently there have been additional requirements (must be an e-passport) to qualify

    More info here: http://travel.state.gov/visa/temp/without/without_1990.html

    From the US Embassy site: Notice: Effective July 1, 2009 all Visa Waiver Program (VWP) emergency or temporary passports must be electronic passports (e-Passports) to be eligible for travel to the United States without a visa under the VWP.

    So in short, you can still go to the states with a non-biometric, non-electronic passport as long as you make a normal Visa application (and get approved).

  32. Eponymous Cowherd
    Big Brother

    @Richard Wharram

    The "biometrics" in an e-passport are merely an electronic version of your passport photo, and the rest is merely an electronic version of what is visibly printed. That's it. That's all it is. All that happens is Mr US Immigration Official compares the printed info and photo with the electronic version and your own live face. All three match and you're good to go.

    This is *not* biometrics in the UK ID / NIR sense of the word, where your ID card is linked to the database and you can be *directly* identified by the ID card biometrics (fingerprints, etc). The information on your passport still just *confirms* who you are. The biometric information you will have to provide for your ID card can be used to *discover* who you are.

    BIG difference.

  33. ElFatbob

    re: Age of mass surveillance

    'ID cards, National Identity Register (NIR), ISA screening, CRB checks, the census - all bricks in the wall of a massive covert program of mass-surveillance.'

    Nothing covert about it anymore....

  34. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @ Richard Wharram

    You don't need a biometric passport to travel to the US.

    You DO need a machine readable passport (one with a barcode which are the sort that have been issued in the last ten years or so), and you need to be enrolled in the US biometric farrago at the point of entry. But that's it.

    The plans are to gradually replace machine-readable passports with biometric ones - which are those containing an electronic copy of the photograph and a digital signature. AND THAT'S IT.

    But then why are you asking. She's a Labour MP, you can tell they're lying when their lips start moving. If they aren't speaking you can be pretty sure they're about to lie to you.

  35. John 61
    IT Angle

    funny old game...

    Politics... if I remember rightly the Conservatives floated ID cards back in 1994 (not quite sure about the year) and Labour objected.

  36. Ted Bovis
    Unhappy

    @ Richard Wharram

    In the main, MPs (on all sides) know little about the details of the scheme. Your MP is lying to you because a) that's Labour's party line, b) she's been lied to, c) she doesn't know anything about it, and d) she doesn't care. I've written stacks of letters to my (Labour) MP about it - all I get in response is stock letters, usually 3 months out of date, that have been issued by the Home Office in reply to *any* question about ID cards/biometrics. When the ID Cards Bill was going through the Commons, there were very few MPs in the chamber actually debating it (and even then the standard of debate was very poor) - but when it came to the vote, the lobby miraculously filled with MPs who had been told to vote for it. They didn't know/care what was in the Bill, they'd just been told to vote for it. That's how laws get passed in this country.

  37. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Almost irrelevant

    Firstly I agree that the notion that 28 million people will just volunteer to pay for an ID card is almost hilarious in it's naievity.

    But as we begin to understand that

    1) The ACPO is still fighting to retain the DNA of the 4 million-odd UK citizens it's already collected,

    2) That the ACPO is also routinely collecting and storing surveillance, intelligence and images of people attending meetings, protests and political rallys,

    3) That GCHQ is looking to intercept & store all comms, web use, emails and phone calls and share that across the whole of Europe as requested by the EU

    4) The the Independant Safeguarding Authority is (according to today's press) now pushing hard to extend thier safeguarding requests out beyond normal jobs involving working with children to what appears to as much of the population as they can bully into it (note the sinister quote today about 'you might find it easier to tender for contracts regardless if you can prove all your staff have been checked)

    5) That the Government is still allowing hundreds and hundreds or public bodies intercept and surveillance powers under RIPA, and is developing the ability to share all collected information across all Government bodies

    6) That regardless of the right/wrogns of the ID card there is no plan to dismantle the National Information Register which underpins it on the grounds that it will be used for biometric passports - and that the Tories have avoided a commitment to kill the NIR off as well.

    7) That the scope of other data collection (e.g. Police ANPR) is being widened and expanded without reference to parliamentary approval.

    One has to ask - what is the point of the ID card anymore anyway? The Government is already collecting shitloads of information on all of us, and GCHQ is already processing it and analysing it !

    The Government already knows who most of the troublemakers in the UK are. It knows where we live, who we have in out phone books, tracks our travel and movements via techs such as mobile phone trangulation.

    There's almost no point in arguing about the ID Card - Labour has already set up most of the the mechanisms required for total state surveillance. We're already there....

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