Blunkett Backs Down on UK ID Cards

Anonymous Brave Guy writes "Some people don't like the civil rights concerns. Some think they'll cost too much. Some think they'll lead to more identity theft than identity verification. Some think governments can't manage big database projects and there are bound to be mistakes and over-runs. Any way you look at it, compulsory ID cards have a lot of potential drawbacks, so is the UK's Home Secretary, David Blunkett, starting to back down from the idea? Combining ID cards with passports and driving licenses was the key way to force them on an often unwilling UK population, and seems to have gone for good, but apparently legislation to bring in some form of ID card is still likely in the next Queen's Speech. Is it the beginning of the end of a bad idea, or just more spin to dodge the remaining concerns?"

Comments

Re:ID cards = bad idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I know it maybe hard you USA-type folk to understand but, the world is not a part of the US but the US a part of the world.
The drinking age in the UK is 18 not 21!

Re:This doesn't seem like a new conclusion

[aaza]

Reminds me of a conversation between Sir Humphrey and Sir Desmond (both of "Yes, Minister")

Sir Desmond Glazebrook : Surely once a Minister has made his decision, that's it, isn't it?
Sir Humphrey Appleby : What on earth gave you that idea?
Sir Desmond Glazebrook : Surely a decision is a decision.
Sir Humphrey Appleby : Only if it is the decision you want. If not it is just a temporary setback.

I want to know if this decision is a decision, or a temporary setback.

quote found on imdb's "Yes, Minister" quotes section

Feh.

[Pig Hogger]

In France, it is compulsory to carry ID at all time; yet, France is seen as a beacon of Liberty and Freedom throughout the world, and if you tell a frenchman that his liberty is severely curtailed by that, he'll scratch his head and maybe ask for some explanation... France has 60 million of population; surely the problem can be scaled efficiently to handle 5 times as much people?

Anglo-saxon countries have those terrible hangups about State-issued ID (amongst other things), mostly for neurotic reasons that can be traced back to the magna-carta. Yet, such IDs can solve a lot of problems that are currently awkwardly and unevenly addressed; like drivers license, for example.

It's not everyone who can have one; blind people, those with motor disabilities or simply heavy cases of dyslexia (it's no good to mix the gas and brake pedals) will make sure that plenty of people will be oddballed by not having what is regarded as an ID-card.

The hodge-podge of US motor-vehicle registration systems (one in each State) make it so many different ways of doing ONE thing.

Banks clerks simply underflow their stacks when confronted by someone who doesn't have a driver's licence; they're simply not programmed for that.

And what about the misuse and abuse of social-security numbers? Video-clubs will ask for it to rent a goddammed DVD!!! It is not likely that a video-club will keep it's database as securely as a bank does.

I'm a DBA for a large government

[Anonymous Coward]

Some think governments can't manage big database projects

I take offense to this. Why, just the other day I managed the following:

SELECT * FROM the_people WHERE sex = 'female' AND marital_status = 'divorced' AND divorce_date >= date_sub(now(), interval 2 month) AND age >= 16 AND age Just doing my duty as a civil servant by catching them on the rebound.

3rd normal form? whats that?

Re:ID cards = bad idea

[gregduffy]

I think it's plain wrong that they require kids to have cars in Germany. Can everyone there afford cars for their kids?

I think not.

A good idea

[mrshowtime]

A great way to get people to use this new id card would be to make it so that you could not be able to buy or sell without the id card, or a tattoo of the id card/w chip implanted.

Re:ID cards = bad idea

[tarunthegreat2]

ID Cars eh? You have a flash a Merc at the door of club before they allow you to get in? That doesn't happen anywhere els...oh wait....

Another problem

[pdoucy]

is that people who are paid to issue ID cards may be total morons.
In France, we've had IDs for quite a long time and I really don't think they're so intrusive.

But I have this example : I recently renewed my ID so that I could travel to some EU country. I filled in the form, waited for three weeks, and finally had my ID... just to notice (myself) that my name was mispelled (my name is 5 letters long !). So I sent it back saying that that may pose a problem. After three more weeks, I had a new ID. My name was correctly spelled, everything was fine and my trip went pretty good.
Some time ago, for an unknown reason, I read what was actually written in my ID, just to discover that they made another mistake...in my gender.

What this means is that those people who are paid to make those IDs and are not even capable of rereading them, potentially gave me two brand new identities...
I thibnk that's a problem...