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UK Government Passes ID Card Bill
cowbutt writes "The two houses of the UK government, the elected House of Commons and the House of Lords have agreed a compromise on Labour's ID cards bill, after Conservative peers accepted a Labour amendment. Under the new amendment, anyone renewing a designated document (e.g. passport) will be able to opt-out of getting a card until 2010, but will still have their details put on the National ID Register immediately."
America is coming dangerously close to this.
Several states have challenged the Real ID act and plan not to adopt it.
What data will ID cards store?
Fears have been raised by opponents of identity cards about the amount of information which could be stored on the database. Here is the full list of the 49 types of information which the Identity Cards Bill says should be on the register.
Personal information
* full name
* other names by which person is or has been known
* date of birth
* place of birth
* gender
* address of principal place of residence in the United Kingdom
* the address of every other place in the United Kingdom where person has a place of residence.
Identifying information
* a photograph of head and shoulders
* signature
* fingerprints
* other biometric information
Residential status
* nationality
* entitlement to remain in the United Kingdom where that entitlement derives from a grant of leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom, the terms and conditions of that leave
Personal reference numbers
* National Identity Registration Number
* the number of any ID card issued
* allocated national insurance number
* the number of any relevant immigration document
* the number of their United Kingdom passport
* the number of any passport issued to the individual by or on behalf of the authorities of a country or territory outside the United Kingdom or by or on behalf of an international organisation
* the number of any document that can be used by them (in some or all circumstances) instead of a passport;
* the number of any identity card issued to him/her by the authorities of a country or territory outside the United Kingdom
* any reference number allocated to him/her by the secretary of state in connection with an application made by him for permission to enter or to remain in the United Kingdom
* the number of any work permit relating to him/her;
* any driver number given to him/her by a driving licence;
* the number of any designated document which is held by him/her and is a document the number of which does not fall within any of the preceding sub-paragraphs
* the date of expiry or period of validity of a document the number of which is recorded by virtue of this paragraph.
Record history
* information falling within the preceding paragraphs that has previously been recorded about him/her in the Register
* particulars of changes affecting that information and of changes made to his/her entry in the Register
* date of death.
Registration and ID card history
* the date of every application for registration made by him/her
* the date of every application by him/her for a modification of the contents of his entry
* the date of every application by him/her confirming the contents of his entry (with or without changes)
* the reason for any omission from the information recorded in his/her entry
* particulars (in addition to its number) of every ID card issued to him/her
* whether each such card is in force and, if not, why not
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
No2ID is the main opposition to the ID Cards scheme. These guys are truly wonderful people though currently somewhat gutted that the Tories sold them out & didn't even have the decency to warn them.
* technical exception in Pennsylvania, in the case of the alcohol.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Firstly getting rid of legal handguns was to stop 'sports' shooters like Hamilton and Ryan killing people with legally held weapons. That has been spectacularly successful.
On the 500,000 illegal guns there is absolutly no evidence for this whatsoever. Indeed during the campaign to get rid of handguns in 1996 the UK shooting bodies and there affiliates used to pick a figure out of the air at random on a weekly basis - one prominent number was at one point seriously citing 5 million illegal handguns in circulation and challenging the Polic to prove him wrong. Most people draw their own conclusions from this about the mental stability of 'sports' shooters.
In fact the best guess that the police could come up with on the basis of actual crime was there was under 10,000 illegal guns available to criminals. The rest, if they existed, were old war trophies in attics.