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UK anti-ID card campaign Gains Momentum
Jack writes "The British No2ID campaign, which opposes the creation of a National Identity Database to hold biometric data on all UK citizens, has created an online pledge as part of an effort to publicise their cause. The three-day old pledge has recently gained the attention of the blogging community, with bloggers bringing a thousand new signatories to the pledge today alone. Readers in the UK are invited to look at the No2ID FAQ on the plans for mandatory ID cards - some of it makes for scary reading." Update: 06/14 17:13 GMT by T : Side note: Tom Steinberg, director of MySociety.org (organizers of this petition) writes "The ID pledge is cool in that it is so big and successful, but it is a very small insight into what pledgebank.com can do." It's actually a much more general organizing tool.
Possibly because you are used to carrying an ID card with you at all times and possibly because what you consider to be an ID card (name, address, maybe a couple of other sensible pieces of information) is nothing like what the government are proposing. Their ID card would include: fingerprints, iris scanning, possibly facial scanning amongst other things. Along with the requirement that all agencies are required to inform other agencies of any changes to these details it means that a large amount of information on me is available to people for no real reason, this is what I object to, especially given their current record of data security.
I wouldn't mind the one off cost of these things in the same way that I don't object to paying for my passport, but I do object to ANYBODY demanding my information on spurious grounds of "security" and that "the public support for ID cards has remained consistently high across all sectors of society [quote from ID cards briefing - http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/docs4/Id_Cards_Briefi ng.pdf%5D"
which is arrant bollocks and typical of the current slippery incumbents of the UK government
ID CARDS: The War on Error
As British MPs wake up to the likelihood that ID cards may be a multibillion pound failure thanks to poor biometric trial results and big predicted increases in costs, warnings from the United States don't bode well either.
When the White House office of management and budget investigated 33 homeland security initiatives involving many firms that are potential ID card contractors, it found that only four of the projects had been effective.
Of the ineffective ones, a scheme called US-Visit is particularly relevant to the ID card debate here in Britain. The 10-year, $10bn contract for a computer network to screen foreigners visiting or leaving the US, recording their details and checking them against terrorist suspect databases, was won by Accenture. It promised a futuristic system with "biometrc" face and fingerprint recognition, but as the US general accounting office (GAO) found, costs would be well above the $7.2bn estimate and this "very risky endeavor" would probably cost "in the tens of billions".
Even less encouraging was its conclusion that "it is uncertain that US-Visit will be able to measurably and appreciably achieve the Department of Homeland Security's stated goals for the program".
Guess what! Accenture is a likely bidder for ID card work in Britain; and Ian Watmore, head of "E Government" here, is a former Accenture chief executive and ID card enthusiast. When he was appointed last year he suggested he would lead the project. So that's all right, then.