Home Sec says 17m ID cards in circulation by 2017

We already know how they propose to do it.

The plans haven't changed in the slightest. By designating first passports (now from 2012? having been quietly slipped again), then some other documents, you will be in effect forced to have an ID card to carry out perfectly ordinary civil functions - such as fleeing to seek political asylum in another country - but it will still be *called* "voluntary".

In fact primary legislation would have to be amended in order for them *not* to issue you with an ID card with your passport once it is designated. For card fetishists, it is worth pointing out that at that point having a passport would in any case be equivalent for all purposes to having an ID card, so at that point the card would start to have relative benefits. If you are on the database for life *anyway*, then it is merely a difference in format and an ID card might be handier to carry.

Back door compulsion.

How do the Government expect to get 49 million people to "volunteer" to sell their souls to the National Identity Register by 2017?

By making life virtually impossible unless you *are* enrolled.

Want to leave the UK? You have to be on the NIR.

Want to buy alcohol? You have to be on the NIR.

Want to open a bank account? You have to be on the NIR.

Want to buy a house or rent a flat? You have to be on the NIR.

And, before we get all of the ovine "nothing to fear" brigade start saying ID cards are used in the rest of Europe, etc, lets not be under any illusions here. ID cards are *NOT* the issue. It is the biometric NIR database that is behind the cards *and* passports (from 2012), and that has *no* equivalent outside of (other?) police states.

They think 28% coverage is a big achievement ...?

Only 28% of the population by 2017... so they'll still be useless for decades. The card is an epically bad idea, but if it was ever to work it would have to be a case of everybody having one. If only 28% have it, you can always say "no guvna, I dont have one, here's my (faked) [passport/drivers license/whatever]".

F*** em

I'll gladly do without a passport, and if they try to impose it by other means, I'll still not get one, I'd rather suffer than become a "number". The police are bad enough as it is without being stopped by some power mad cretin asking for "Papers please" These fuck wit politicians seem to forget that they are there to do our bidding, no the other way around. How is it that so many people, so easily want to be ruled by corrupt criminals. If anyone needs ID and tracking then it should be the charlatans in the house of commons.

The time for civil unrest approaches. Summer fun and games!

No Country for Spoofed Spies

Given the complete lack of assurance over the Dubai debacle where biometric passports where cloned and passed the mustard in one of the most paranoid and heavy handed identity checking world states...

17 million ID cards + 32 million Biometric passports = 49 Million identities falsely roaming the planet bumping off people that someone else doesn't like.

If the shit scared, pants wetting, security forces in the UK are so freaked out about the prospect of not recognising every face that passes before them then there has to be a better way of setting such fragile minds at ease. (Thanks to the Reg its hard to escape the fact that a national database means fake id records are easier to hide, false positives are numerous & impossible to remove from searches, and the whole setup screams non-performant).

Instead of proving identity, which is terribly zen and likely beyond the grasp of most security personal, so how about we collect and carry personal references that the police then call up to verify with the referee. Of course the referees would need to be people beyond reproach (or at least viewed as such by a government) so how about the your local MP, the Home Secretary and the Queen, which will ensure that only those that need to be stopped-and-harassed will be so inconvenienced.

Thank Gawd I'm Out.

I was planning on keeping my UK passport as soon as I got my Canadian citizenship (one year down two more to go), begining to feel I should just sever ties at that point instead.

Just glad we got out.

UID

It's not the card it's the database stupid.

Shameful hubris and shocking waste of my money

Surely the illiberal measures taken by the New Labour Government will be staked through the heart by our incoming Tory Government? Yes? Maybe? Hmmm.

At the moment I'm a resident alien in the UK and haven't been compelled to obtain an ID card. I only wish my citizenship would come through in time to vote these rascals out!

Home Sec thinks he will still be in power in 2017.

I doubt either belief is *any* more likely than the other.

Tuttle Buttle

Soon we'll have bar codes welded to our foreheads and cables coming out of our backs and will be little more than batteries inside a huge machine producing a mass hallucination that we're living on a doomed rock spinning around a sun that will burn out in 5 billion years.

But before this, before you even know it, we'll all have to work for a living AND have to give part of our earnings to a government just so they can build stuff to enable us to work and get to work!

Next thing you know, they'll have CCTV cameras everywhere and the Chocolate Factory will be looking in all our windows just to make sure we're doing the right thing.

We're doomed!

This country is going to the dogs!

I'm packing up and shipping out to the Colonies first chance I get - I'll be there, with my Ticket to TGGLand (The Grass is Greener Land), with my Rose Tinted specs firmly embedded on my fizog as I rant and rave about the loss of liberties we never actually had in the first place.

I'll cast my mind back to the good old days of the 50's, post war, when the masses were uneducated and we believed everything the Lizard queen told us. Then later, to the heady 60's that only existed if you were tripping on acid and had a great deal of dosh.

Spin forward to the fantastic 70's when everything went tits up and the rozzers would bash your door down crying "I'm 'avin 'oops", whilst the country was on strike and the rubbish piled up in the streets. Then we'd be waxing lyrical about the 'loadsa money' 80's except if you had dreads and a dog on a string, in which case you'd be battling the rozzers in a bean field because you wanted to party on down to rave music and blow a whistle. Onto the 90's when the country was fantastic but nobody had any money till those labour fellows came in and gave us loadsa money for free until the noughties when we realised it wasn't ours and had to give it all back.

... I'll get my coat ...

Your a number already, join the queue...

Anyone remember...

The Poll Tax riots ?

By 2017?

Is this the same government that wont have any new power stations on stream by 2017, or the same government that wont be starting any major rail link until 2017, or the same government that pisses money away on IT schemes that fall over when someone tries to enter some data?

Note : if they can prosecute and convict me for having no ID card, then they can prove my identity well enough to prosecute and convict me without one.

Therefore why do I need a card in the first place?.

Alien... because we know our 'leaders' are on a different planet to the rest of us

Young Adults

Unless you want a driving license, you have to get one of these ID cards if you want to have a beer in a pub if you've just turned 18. No one is going to carry their passport around.

There's nothing wrong with an ID card - it's just the database that's the issue. If Labour lose then perhaps a new government will get rid of the database element.

Why on earth is there a paper bit to the Driving License ? Shouldn't the govrnment fix that first ?

@ AC 14:03 - misinformed

"Unless you want a driving license, you have to get one of these ID cards if you want to have a beer in a pub if you've just turned 18."

Nonsense. You can get any of the PASS scheme cards for a tenner. You can stop using it whenever you like, and they will not fingerprint you, pass out your personal details to other organisations, or impose penalties on you.

http://www.citizencard.com/

http://www.validateuk.co.uk/