Is it or isn't it? Brown keeps bottling the ID card question

What?

Brown said..

"..look we are a country that prides ourselves on liberty, in civil liberties.."

Was he high or just joking?

At least our government's civil liberties record is not quite as bad as it's record on privacy, data protection, failure of large and expensive projects, political nepotism, shady financial deals and general incompetance, corruption, dishonesty and arrogance.

Still , no worries, eh?

Useless, bogie eating, Stalinist.....

dribbling, tax raising fool.

Quite frankly the incompetence of the man and the circus of fools he is surrounded by is frightening.

ID cards won't be canceled until the friends/cronies/suppliers have supped a few billions.

So why...

Did I just pay nearly £80 for my shiney new passport ? Is this no longer ID ??

Compulsion by the back door

Given that it will be impossible to work, buy/rent a home, buy/rent a car, travel, open a bank account, etc, without an ID card.

No, you don't *have* to have an ID card as long as you're happy living on the street and getting your food out of bins.

The whole point behind Brown's assertion that ID cards are 'non-compulsory' is to reduce pressure to have them scrapped. If people (stupid people, IMHO) believe they aren't compulsory they won't object to them. By the time they discover they cannot even fart without presenting their (non compulsory) card it will be way too late.

@NickJ - it's already happening

I moved twice in 12 months - the first time, I registered with a new GP practice without even visiting the surgery or providing proof of residence, my partner picked up a form for me, I signed it and she took it back.

The second time I was told that I needed to come to the surgery between certain hours on a weekday (difficult as I work in London, miles from home) and bring proof of ID (photographic) and proof of residence. I was also told that the standard registration form (downloadable from the DoH web site) wasn't acceptable and that I would have to fill out the practice's own form in the surgery "to prevent fraud". I even wrote a letter enclosing a downloaded form and my NHS number in an attempt to register, but it was sent back to me.

All the time, the surgery insisted that these requirements were imposed on them by the local PCT. Talking to the local PCT I discovered that this is not true, but attempts to resolve the issue have, so far, not been successful. Luckily there are other practices in the area that I can register with.

This may be an extreme case of hiding the fact that the practice is full, but it does show how we are being softened up for ID cards.

Someone told me that not so long ago, when you moved GP, you went to your doctor and he or she would write personally to a GP in the area you were moving to to introduce you as a patient - this sounds like a most excellent method.

In an English Country Garden

PCPlod (for it is he): Can I see your ID card sir

Johhny FFforiegner: No sir, indeed I am an Englishman in his fortress

PCP: Can you prove that

JF: Of course sir, I have no ID card

PCP: That's good enough for me - on your way

Sergeant Plod: Not so fast there - what's the nickname of the English RFC Captain Johhny (boy) Gillete

JF: Ah, um would it be Johnny boy

SP: Nah - its Jazza - right you're nicked

Bring it on

Personally I like the idea of 'foolproof' ID cards

So much so that when they come in, I fully intend to get about half a dozen

I've chosen Paris, although she is more Bio Hazard than Metric

Euro-politics.

"I think over the course of the next few months people will see that there is some wisdom in the argument that we have put forward for identity cards themselves."

Taking a leaf out of the Brussles approach to Democracy I see. In other words: We know it's right and therefore it is right. Anybody who disagrees with us, by definition doesn't understand it properly. We'll keep asking the question until we get the right answer, which is Yes.

Anybody who can explain to me the actual difference between a Dictatorship (We tell you what's right and you don't get a say) and Euro-democracy (We tell you what's right, you do get a say, but only if you agree with us) please feel free to try.

Not compulsory my *^&*!!!

I've given up being surprised by the mendacity of this lot. I'll have to settle for merely being furious.

A Fiasco-to-be

I'm just wondering how many millions will be thrown at EDS before the project is canceled.

Unless you can guarantee that a biometric ID will not produce a false positive*, then you'll be free to apply for as many biometric IDs as you have fake IDs. After all, the first biometric ID you have can only be based on an existing, non-biometric ID.

Effectively, biometrics will serve to strengthen a fake ID.

Sigh...... We're all paying for this, you know....

*Hmmm. According to our system, you're also Mr Y and Mr Z.

Mr X: What? Nonsense. Prove it.

I'm as mad as hell...

This guy makes my blood boil. He is a disgrace to everything I was brought up to believe our country stood for!

Cards for foreigners but not compulsory for citizens... Great but how the **** am I supposed to prove I'm not an illegal immigrant if I don't have a card that says I'm not. My friend is black and speaks with a strong accent. How does this work for him or is it only for white people who speak with a British accent? Legally he's as much a citizen as I am but I see him having to prove it a lot more often. Kind of flies in the face of Government policy on multiculturalism, doesn't it or is it OK for people who have become citizens to be treated as second class?

The encryption protecting the data on these cards will become the holy grail of ID fraudsters. If you have the master key you can prove to they system that "you are" the person whose name appears on the card and that will never be challenged because the system is "perfect." I bet it won't store the fingerprint scanned at the point of the transaction either so you will have no way to have it recalled and demonstrate it really wasn't you. How long before we see a trojan that, instead of (or as well as) sending spam, uses your machine to process cracks against a card to recover the key? Just think, a million PCs churning away in parallel, the SETI of ID theft.

When the code falls (and it will fall eventually) we'll all be up the creek without a paddle as the Police will have "proof" (at least until it becomes so widespread that the Government admits the breach) that it was you that opened that bank account being used by organised criminals. You also won't get a refund when they empty your bank account as your bank can "prove" it was you that withdrew that money. In fact they'll probably call the Police and have you prosecuted for attempting to defraud them by making a false claim.

How many innocent people will go to jail and for how long before they are freed on appeal for a "miscarriage of justice"? Lots if whoever cracks it uses the crack sparingly.

When the system falls who will pay for the cards to be replaced? "Your card has been abused, that'll be £50 for a new one..." Even if it's not like that we'll all pay for the replacements in our taxes.

If the Government really has this many billions of spare budget why don't they fix up all our schools and hospitals? They could help the homeless or invest it in creating jobs or renewable energy. There's a thousand things they could do with it that would be of real benefit to the people of this country. This is not one of them.

Brown now sees the future and it's expensive...

It's becoming clear that the government was sold on ID cards by lies told by "the usual suspects" in the IT systems business. They were told it would be cheap, they were told (but it was not explained how) that ID cards would solve everything from fraud to global warming. As the government is totally clueless about technology, they couldn't see the obvious problems.

Brown now sees that there may be better uses for the 10 to 20 billion pounds ID cards will cost over the next 10 years.

I expect that the entire policy will shrink down to the existing RFID enabled passports, perhaps with an enhanced check on first application and renewals.

E-passports

On a recent trip to Canada, I nipped over the border to the US for a couple of days and spent three quarters of an hour being interviewed by a border patrol guy as he didn't like my newfangled electronical passport.

"Why have you got this?" he asked.

"What's all this wire on the back page?"

In these situations I find it best to bite my tongue.

I'm sure Paris doesn't have these problems.

Just forget it

The fact is that since Gordon Brown became PM, there's been a gradual backing out from this disaster: they realised what would happen should it ever be implemented. All the signals, leaks, nudges, hints and newspaper interviews tell the story.

Unlike Blair & Blunkett, he and Jack Straw were never convinced of their need. Being old-fashioned Labour believing in Civil Liberties, all they're trying to do is get out of the mess they inherited from those two NuLab creeps.

@Gordon Brown

GB: "But the very fact that you’ve got biometrics now in a way that you didn’t have two centuries ago gives you opportunities to protect people’s identity.."

This from the government that lost half the nation's identity?! ROTFLMAO

Gordon Brown? Gordon Bennett, more like.

and I kid you not

CD data transfer in light of the fiasco recently is to be encrypted with Winzip.

Cards aren't the problem

It's the National Identity Register that's the issue. That's where the 50-odd items of data will live (until they're shared with whoever ends up with the missing disks, of course) and that's the part that you'll have to update every time you move etc on pain of a £2000 fine. Regardless of whether you get a piece of plastic to carry around and regardless of how useless the biometrics are, it's the NIR at the back end which is going to accumulate the picture of your life.

Think Broon is going to give up the opportunity to build the NIR? Dream on. The "make cards non-compulsory" is just a token gesture.

We are a country that prides ourselves on liberty, in civil liberties...

... says Gordon Brown.

Oh really? This on exactly the same day that Parliament "debated" the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill 2007.

This Bill contains, amongst other draconian legislation, the "Dangerous Pictures Act" that will have you locked up for three years simply for possessing pictures of "extreme pornography" which certain members of the Government find "abhorrent"!

Despite even Labour MPs opposing this measure and proposing amendments, it didn't even get mentioned because the Government disgracefully truncated the debate meaning that a Thought Crime is one step closer to entering UK law since it is the Government's position that we can't be trusted to look at this stuff in case it makes us do bad things.

See http://www.backlash-uk.org.uk/ for more details.

Mr Brown, your hypocrisy is utterly breathtaking!

@We are a country etc

Extreme pornography, like pics of Prezza on the cabinet table with his mistress ?

Leather jacket, map of central Europe on the liner ... thnaks

Nothing new here, move along please...

Brown's just retailing precisely the same <strike>lies</strike> misleading presentations that ministers have all through the sorry affair, only with considerably less verbal dexterity than Clarke, Blunkett, Blair... "A vote in Parliament" - under whips - big deal. "Not compulsory" but to be made a requirement to live anything like a normal life. You might progressively have to give up the opportunity to travel, drive, have a bank account, get education or medical treatment, become a security guard or hospital porter, get any kind of non-casual work, instruct a lawyer, in order to avoid registration, but that will of course be your choice. No one will arrest you for failing to apply for an ID card, though one imagines you might be compulsorily registered when you are banged up for vagrancy offences. (That's how French ID cards started: gypsy control.)

And the emphasis on feelthy foreigners isn't even new. They've been pressing this button repeatedly for over a year, as the only one that has any real pull with the public.

Can we have a NO2ID icon please?

How long until EU

How long until the EU Directive on RFID implants on newborns for secure identification?

This is where UK, and the rest of Europe, is heading. Smells and sounds like the serial-numbering the Nazis did in their KZ-camps, only this time they want the entire European population tagged for monitoring.

//Svein

interesting....

Gordon Brown says "I think over the course of the next few months people will see that there is some wisdom in the argument that we have put forward for identity cards themselves"

Does this mean we can expect some unpleasantness blamed on "terrorists" in the next few months so the naive masses have the frighteners put on them and are crying out for security in the form of ID cards?

For foreigners?

Funny, cos I am sure originally they <i>weren't</i> going to make ID cards available to foreigners*, presumably on the grounds that no ID card = not British = no NHS etc. So they would be de-facto compulsory.

Now they state that they will be <i>starting</i> with foreigners, who probably won't be able to use the biometric information to prove that the card is actually theirs anyway (few readers) so the ID card will indeed be no better than a passport and probably worse initially.

I thought entering the US was bad enough (like Nev - "Whats this bit?", "Thats the electronic part of the passport", "Why is that there?", "Cos the US require it now", "To do what? [now suspicious of foreigner with funny passport]"), what's it going to be like doing something in the UK? ("ID card? - oh, we can't read this, picture ID and two forms of address verification please to prove it's your card...")

As a dual national I am not sure whether I am required to have one or required not to have one...

*foreigners who were just visiting obviously, cos a legally working foreigner pays taxes etc covering the NHS and would need one. Oh, and an asylum seeker would need one too. Europeans could use their existing one for reciprocal health stuff, unless they didn't have ID cards...

Gumption, or lack of it.

"Unlike Blair & Blunkett, he and Jack Straw were never convinced of their need. Being old-fashioned Labour believing in Civil Liberties, all they're trying to do is get out of the mess they inherited from those two NuLab creeps."

If this were true, why don't they just get up on their hind legs, stop braying for a moment and say: "This was always a marginal idea, and time has proven that the costs will greatly outweigh the benefits. We believe that the prudent course is to abandon it before the serious costs are incurred, saving large amounts of money which will, instead be spent on..."

Maybe it's because they are donkeys and cannot stop braying. Or maybe it's because they're Stalinist control freaks who want to RFID tag us all.

They're as bad as each other

Damn, this man's as bad as Cameron with his Bill of Rights for British Citizens.

So he will discriminate against foreign nationals by making them carry ID cards when British Citizens will not have to?

Must be a European Convention on Human Rights article that deals with that...

ID Card.....followed closely by ID theft

Whilst I have nothing to fear from ID thieves - or at any rate, those ID thieves who think they will be able to take out mortgages and apply for credit cards and empty my bank account etc as my credit rating is so bad they are more likely to get a knock from debt collections - I am thoroughly disturbed at the thought of heaven knows who in the public sector sniffing around my identity. Having worked as a temp in several areas of "Government" I can tell that a lot of this wonderful new "database" will be administered, very badly, by temps and other workers who are hired to fill a diversity hole. They will be given little training, little thought and care, afterall they are simply expendable, the jackass to whom to pin the blame tail when it all goes horribly wrong.

Of course, the lessons of history are that Governments use identity to divide, conquer and destroy. If these ridiculous cards ever actually come to pass, I will be packing up and going. My father fought for Britain's freedom and to crush a tyrant over sixty years ago. After a decade of Labour's pinkwashed socialism, I am left wondering why exactly he bothered. This is not the country he and countless others fought to save.