Slashdot Mirror
UK Home Office Set To Scrap National ID Cards
mjwx writes "In what would seem to be a sudden outbreak of common sense for the UK, the Home Office has put forward a plan to scrap the national ID card system put into place by the previous government. From the BBC: 'The Home Office is to reveal later how it will abolish the national identity card programme for UK citizens. The bill, a Queen's Speech pledge, includes scrapping the National Identity Register and the next generation of biometric passports.' The national ID card system, meant to tackle fraud and illegal immigration, has drawn widespread criticism for infringing on privacy and civil rights. However, the main driver for the change in this policy seems to be the 800-million-pound cost. Also in the article, indications of a larger bill aimed at reforms to the DNA database, tighter regulation of CCTV, and a review of libel laws."
A government that actually gives up some power over people. I am speechless.
You can't handle the truth.
In what would seem to be a sudden outbreak of common sense
Hardly a "sudden" outbreak. We had an election that was hardly a surprise (it was held at basically the last minute it could be, as everyone expected). As a result the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have formed a coalition governement. Both coalition parties have pledged for a long time to scrap ID cards. It was also set out in their initial coalition agreement and it's one of the "freedom" things they feel they have a common platform on. Anyone who is surprised by the suddeness of the plan to scrap ID cards is... well, foreign. Not that there's anything wrong with that of course.
It had long been thought by everyone (other than the last government, who just got sent packing) that the ID cards just wouldn't work the way they were meant to (i.e. they don't protect anyone, and are just infringements on privacy and civil liberty, costing the citizenry money they shouldn't have to pay).
The £800 million was supposed to be recouped by the Government by charging to have the card (they were intended to be mandatory eventually with every passport). In other words, another tax to fund a scheme that wouldn't work as advertised and gave the populace no benefit while giving even more personal info to the government.
It'd been a promise since the early days (years back) by every other party to scrap this waste of time and money if they ever came into power. Labour were hoping to have it in place and active (making it much harder to scrap) before they were voted out. Thankfully they failed.
Of course this will leave in place the quaint system thats currently there -- theres no national register of who lives where. So opening a bank account requires you to bring in a random assortment of water bills, phone bills, as proof of address, getting a passport requires you to get the reverse of your passport photograph signed by "a person of standing" i.e. your doctor or a certified engineer or a company director. Hardly waterproof, really.
As compared to what? How did you think they were going to verify who you are for purposes of issing an ID card? You've ruled out anything that evidences your address, you've ruled out passport, you've ruled out testimony of reliable seeming person who knows you. So what's your plan? What is "waterproof"? The whole biometric thing comes AFTER you've established your identity to them, not before.
To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem. ~ h2g2
Scrapping the plan was never really about the cards; most people weren't really bothered about the card itself, it was the vast amount of data that was to be linked to the card via the National Identity Register that was cause for concern - especially as the previous government had a truly shocking record on both data security and large-scale IT projects.
What made me laugh was the report that David Blunkett (the Labour Home Secretary that gave birth to the scheme) wants to sue the Government for the thirty quid that the card cost him: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/i-might-sue-over-scrapped-id-card-says-blunkett-1985447.html Oh, and it's worth remembering that the Tories wanted to introduce an ID card system (sans database) back in the 90's.
Who would've predicted 20 years ago that a Conservative government is now more liberal than a labour one. What did labour bring the UK in respect to civil liberties?
- Huge amounts of CCTV - one estimate claims the it's the highest in the world
- Useless passports that don't work in most airports
- An illegal war or two
- Sponging off the state is more attractive than working
I voted labour in 1997 and was fairly anti-conservative back then. Since that time something happened to the party (Tony Blair) that has completely transformed them in my view.
"and issue the cards for free."
The cards were never going to be issued for free; they were going to be forced on us and we would have had to pay for them (in fact the 15,000ish who had purchased the cards before the election have been told they will not get refunds but, instead, will have a souvenir of "historical" note).
The purchase price of the cards was meant to cover the operating costs of the scheme; government don't pay - we do. They take our taxes, then want more stealth taxes.
Todd: I hope it proves as delicious as the farmers that grew them
800-Million is a shedload for a scheme that no one wanted except a few people that bought what ever the excuse was that week. I MEAN WHAT THE HELL WERE THEY MEANT TO BE FOR? First to fight terrorism...they couldn't figure out how they would help as the july seven attackers would have had valid ones anyway, then to combat benefit fraud....then they figured that benefit ID fraud costs less than the scheme would, then it was to help against ID theft online.....they didn't stick with that one for long as even they couldn't come up with how it could possibly work , then it was easier travel in Europe..... but they never told the travel companies and none of them accepted them, then they were to stop illegal immigration....then they realised the kind of people that employ illegal immigrants is not likely to check for ID, the last reason I saw was as an easy way for people to prove their age to buy drinks....then they realised that perhaps promoting them as a card that lets young people get legless might clash with the how cracking down on yob culture thing. The only reason I could see for anyone to want them is to allow them to monitor the population and generally allow the government stick their nose into other peoples business. Not a reason I too keen on.
When Augusto Pinochet came to power, one of the first things he did was to round up the offices of the Socialist party and get their membership records.
With that list they just went, knocked to the doors of their political oponents, and dealt with them with the brutality characteristic of right wing extremists (when Pinochet died Chilean youngsters saluted the departed leader with Neo Nazi salutes, how ironic that Maggie Thatcher was such a good friend of this bastard).
Europeans, having experienced totalitarian regimes in the last 100 years ( Stalinists in most of Eastern Europe, Fascists in Central and Mediterranean Europe, Ultra Nationalists in the Balkans) one would have thought would be the most reacious people in the world to any form of such political control (which is what it is: no ID, no services. Neat.)
With all its faults, the UK, one of the few countries that escaped totalitarian regimes in recent history, has a sizeable amount of the population with whom this kind of policy seats uncomfortably, even if that means a bit less conveneince during dealing with official business of any kind.
It was only the prominence of Labour (many of its ministers former Left Wing nutcases, i.e. proponents of an overpowering overview of the state of everything) what permitted the idea of ID cards being a good idea. One or two of them actually became closely associated with companies with interest in promoting ID cards after they left office in disgrace.
There is no reason you should not have a number to access your services, the problem is it being unique and the government, not you, having control about who can access the personal information associated to it.
You post a story about the new British regime.
For those unaware, Britain has had a new coalition government for the past 3 weeks, and it's been active in stating it's goals of rolling back many of the civil liberties infringements in the UK that came about under Labour.
There have been countless stories on Firehose, but positive stories about a final change of state of British politics that has massive meaningful benefits for improving the state of civil liberties here in the UK are apparently not newsworthy, it's better to stick to negative stories about how the world is going to end. Apparently.
It's a shame because Slashdot could use some positive news on the civil liberties front, and there has been a lot from the UK this last few weeks. To sum most of them up, the stated intentions of the new coalition government are:
- The removal of the DNA database
- The removal of the national identity register
- Cancelling the go ahead of enhanced biometric passports
- Cancellation of the contact point database
- Removal of restrictions on right to peaceful protest
- Stronger restrictions on the use of CCTV cameras
- Ban fingerprinting of children in school without parental permission
- Increase the scope of the freedom of information act
- Remove innocent people from the DNA database
- Restore trial by jury as a right in all criminal cases
- Review and hopefully rework libel laws to prevent stifling of freedom of speech
- Introduce more legislation to prevent abuse of anti-terror laws
- Ban interception and storage of e-mail and other digital communications without good reason (i.e. a specific warrant)
Now, you wouldn't realise any of this if you simply read Slashdot of course, but there you go. Hopefully the UK is seeing a bit of a turnaround now that totalitarian Labour have been kicked out, and for the first time in about a hundred years, the Liberals are part of government again.
It's not all perfect of course, no one can like everything their government does. The new coalition has also said that they will allow citizens to put forward bills for repeal, whether the digital economy act can be included is yet to be seen, but right now, the things there are cold hard plans for are extremely promising and look set to get the go ahead.
It's just a shame Slashdot didn't post the full list of changes when Nick Clegg the new deputy PM did a speech on restoring civil liberties in the UK last week when there were like 20 firehose submissions on it, but oh well, I suppose we should be glad now that at least the fact a tiny miniscule portion of the goings on over here has been posted, albeit a week late.
However, the main driver for the change in this policy seems to be the 800-million-pound
Gorilla? Please be gorilla. That's a big gorilla.
cost.
Disappointing close to that sentence.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.