UK Compulsory ID Plan Shelved

e9th writes "Despite a bump or two along the way, it seemed that compulsory ID cards were a done deal in the UK. Now, the Financial Times is reporting that the scheme has been shelved. Unfortunately, it seems that this was more a matter of convenience than of concern for citizens' privacy."

Comments

I don't get it

[Jurily]

What's all the uproar about ID cards? It's not like you don't use photo ID (and credit cards) everywhere already. This looks like it just standardizes the process.

Re:I don't get it

[corsec67]

When they aren't required, it is harder for the police to force you to show them. In the US, if you aren't driving a car, then you don't need to carry anything showing who you are.

I am currently living in Japan, so I have an ID that has my identity, and I am required to carry that (or my passport) on my person at all times. This means that if a police officer stops me, they can require my producing identification documents.

Having a standard format for an ID maybe be useful, but then the next step is to require people to carry it, and then making it a crime to not present that to a police officer when requested.

Re:I don't get it

[Ginger Unicorn]

yeah but all those database are separate entities and there is practically impenetrable firewall of bureaucracy and privacy laws stopping them being cross referenced.

Re:I don't get it

[RivieraKid]

The ID card won't - as you say, they already have a huge amount of information on me anyway.

The problem, is that the UK government wants to link each and every database that has information on me together. It is that seemingly innocuous act that makes so much difference. With it, the ID cards goes from a single method of identification to the single way that the government gains all of that power over you. Take for example, the governments use of anti-terror laws to press criminal charges against citizens who put plastic bottles in the normal trash instead of the recycle bin. Or the fact that they used anti-terror laws to sieze the assets of Icelandic banks when their economy collapsed. Precisely how long do you think it's going to be before they start opressing the rest of us once they gain the ability to track every last piece of information about us at the click of a button, in realtime (or at least, near-realtime)? The problem isn't that they can get at the information, the problem is that if they get their way, instead of having to go through due process, and have to track you, they will know exactly where you are going to be and when. The problem is that for all the public condemnation of various communist and dictatorial states, that is precisely where they would love to be - with complete control over the populace. The problem is that they are so dishonest about what they want. They claim it will save us from the boogey man - well, I call shenanigans. Smoking kills more people than Bin Laden. Alcohol kills more. Cars kill more. Cancer kills more. The problem is that the national identity register, and the national ID card programs, are a solution looking for a problem. They will do absolutely nothing for the general public that we don't already have. However, the danger to the public is immense, even assuming we give the government the benefit of the doubt, and trust that there are proper auditing, accounting, and restitution procedures in place to prevent abuse, take the example of the national child register. A huge database of the personal information (including name, date of birth, address, school.....) of every child in Britain. It was put in place to "protect" the children. Again, a threat that is so insignificant compared to other less glamorous threats. This was created at great cost, and the entire database was promptly left on a train, unencrypted on CD that anyone could pop into a computer and read. They couldn't even manage to protect a database of extremely vulnerable people with a fraction of the complexity of what they are proposing - they have no chance at all of protecting the rest of us, even if they have purely altruistic goals, which history has shown is simply not the case.

BNP has interesting side effects

[geegel]

I somewhat doubt that convenience had anything to do with it. The recent elections and the beating Labour took are probably the reason behind this move. Democracy at work fellas! And it's a really beautiful sight

Re:BNP has interesting side effects

[geegel]

The ascendance of BNP from a fringe party to a main stage party is in my opinion a good thing. I don't agree with their agenda, but they are the voice of a segment which didn't have a voice before. The "solutions" they propose are as sharp as a brick, but the problems they raise are real. This step forward will highlight these problems and as the less extremist parties propose more reasonable solutions, the support for BNP will wane. I know that the first instinct is to remind everybody of Hitler and his rise, but a better equivalent is I think France. Jean-Marie Le Pen and the National Front had a similar path to that of BNP and they are nowhere to be found nowadays precisely because the main parties found a way to solve these problems.

Not so fast! What about passports?

[mdwh2]

Whilst this is a great step forward, one of the big problems with this scheme is that over the last few years, the Government has been basically turning the British passport into the ID card (the plan was that anyone getting a passport would have a "combined" passport and ID card).

So my fear is that we'll still end up with the same problems for anyone who wants a passport:

* Being put on the National Identity Register database (which is actually what the ID card criticism is mainly about - it's not about the physical "card" as such), along with regulations such as being fined £1,000 for failing to notify authorities of change of address.
* Biometric passports. TFA says these have "cross-part support" - it's unclear if this means fingerprints (currently we already have "biometrics" in the sense of digital photos, which I don't have a problem with, but fingerprints are another issue).
* The cost. Passports have risen from around £30 to £72 in recent years, much of this is due to basically turning the passport into the ID card. This is expected to rise to at least £93.

Even though a passport is not compulsory for everyone, for those of us who want to travel to another country (and remember, the UK isn't a big place like the US - most of the population have passports, and a lot of us like to travel), so my fear is that unless you are giving up your ability to travel, it will still be a compulsory ID card in everything but the name.

Does anyone have more info as to whether the National Identity Register itself will be shelved, or is it simply stepping back the plans on who will have to have one?

Just time to boil the frog more carefully...

[MindKata]

"UK.gov ineptitude when it comes to anything IT"

Its a shame their deviousness isn't as inept as their technical knowledge, but then they are more interested in manipulation and power games than they are in specific details of technology.

They are still bring in ID cards. This move isn't stopping the cards. But now they are bring them in more slower over a long time scale, at first voluntary. Its bring them in by exploiting feature creep. It starts off as its voluntary for this and its voluntary for that. Then it becomes it helps this and it helps that. Then it becomes its important to this and its important to that. Then it becomes its required for this and its required for that. Then finally it becomes its mandatory for this and its mandatory for that and then eventually you can't do anything without the ID cards. Then finally they get what they aimed to do all along.

They know ID cards are very unpopular and so now they are starting to tread more carefully. They know their ever present power grabbing nature is very unpopular, (in this case power grabbing via information grabbing on people for their own gain (after all, information is power)) and so they are now treading more carefully.

So now they are just boiling the frog more carefully. Yet now many people are initially fooled into believing its not going to happen. Exactly what the control freaks want, as it means over time they will now face less resistance to them bring them in more slowly.