Why ID cards suck

1. I carry a driving licence to prove that I am capable of driving; I carry a bank card to gain access to my bank account (which no-one else should have access to); I carry ID for my workplace because it is a secure building and I can't get in otherwise; I carry a passport to prove who I am at the border so I can get let back into my country of origin. These are all special resources or services to which limited access is required. I shouldn't have to carry an ID card to prove that I am allowed to live and move freely in my own country, where I was born. I don't want to live in a police state.
   
   
2. The underlying database is costly and time-consuming to build, and judging by other government IT projects and data-loss fiascos, will be easy to hack and easy to mislay data from. It's also the largest and most complicated government IT project yet.
   
   
3. ID cards won't help to catch terrorists or prevent terrorism. All the people involved in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade centre were carrying ID cards. There are other measures which would be far more effective.
   
   
4. ID cards will not prevent cases of mistaken identity; they are more likely to exacerbate the problem, because law enforcement officials will assume that the system is more robust, when it isn't.
   

Bill for ID cards rises by £50m

Hopefully this will now mean ID cards are dead in the water, but we must remain vigilant...

clipped from www.guardian.co.uk The costs of the national identity card project crept up by a further £50m yesterday as the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, announced that a small number of transport workers will be able to volunteer to get the cards next year before the official launch date. Despite this effort to reduce the costs of creating a national network of ID enrolment centres, the latest cost report for the scheme shows that the projected overall bill continues to creep up. The bill for issuing ID cards to all foreign nationals who are long-term resident in Britain, which began this month, has risen by £7m since March to £326m. The cost for British nationals has also crept up in the last six months by a further £45m to £4.7bn over the next 10 years. This figure does not include the costs to any other government department of using the ID cards to check identities.

help stop id cards

This seems like a good way to let people know about what a bad idea ID cards are. I've had a poster in the window for ages that says "ID card free zone" but I think a lot of people are still mystified as to why this is an issue. It's very simple - the ID data would be stored on a central database. After the recent fiasco, do we really trust the government to keep all our data in one place, making it easier to hack into, and easier for our identities to be stolen by fraudsters?

Labour's plans to introduce ID cards would be both a massive intrusion into our civil liberties and also a hugely wasteful way of spending government funds.

The pressure from campaigners against ID cards is starting to tell. Labour has already put back by two years its plans to introduce mandatory ID cards for UK citizens.

You can help build up even more pressure by using this simple flyer: just print off a few copies and deliver them through the letterboxes of your neighbours.

It's a single-sided A4 black and white leaflet - so should be easy to print on any printer.

This really simple step will only take a few minutes of your time, but would help spread our message further and get more people signed up to our campaign against ID cards.

It would be great to hear back from everyone taking part in this action - just email ecampaignteam@libdems.org.uk with the number you delivered and the postcode.

If you don't want to use the Lib Dems' leaflet, the No2ID campaign also has a selection of campaign resources.

the final push

The government has retreated again over ID cards: the information was leaked today that they have put back by two years the plans for mandatory ID cards for UK citizens. This latest twist in the sorry saga of ID cards just shows what an ill-conceived idea they are.

It is, in my opinion, wrong that I should have to carry a card to identify myself in the country where I live. However, philosophical objections aside, the scheme is going to be extremely expensive, and will undoubtedly fail to fulfill its stated aim of protecting us from terrorists (as the problem with terrorists is that they have access to bombs and guns, not that they don't carry ID). Add to that the fact that they are incapable of safeguarding the data they already hold about us (the lost child benefit data being a case in point), and the system will increase the possibility of identity fraud, as criminals will be more easily able to steal someone's identity - they only have to hack into one central database instead of several.

I note that the government's proposed incremental roll-out of the cards targets the vulnerable and marginalised (such as refugees) first - this looks suspiciously to me like some sort of "divide and conquer" strategy. First they came for the refugees, and I did nothing, because I was not a refugee... You know the rest.

The campaigning pressure is paying off - but we need to do more to turn delay into cancellation.

There are two simple things you can do today to help win this battle:

1. Sign the LibDems' petition or sign up for No2ID.

2. Write to one of these newspapers expressing your opposition to I.D. cards:

Guardian: letters@guardian.co.uk
Telegraph: dtletters@telegraph.co.uk
Your own local newspaper

Remember to include your postal address (for verification), the title, date and URL of the article you are referring to, and a daytime contact telephone number.

Letters pages are one of the best-read sections of newspapers, so this is a very powerful way of publicising your views. The letters can be brief: simply pointing out, for example, the huge costs of ID cards, the poor record of keeping within budget on previous IT projects, and what a terrible record the government has on safeguarding personal data (the recent CD disaster, for example).

chipping

Ministers are planning to implant "machine-readable" microchips under the skin of thousands of offenders as part of an expansion of the electronic tagging scheme that would create more space in British jails.

This is outrageous. One suspects that it's the thin end of the wedge and the general public will be next.

What about when the prisoners are freed? Will the chip be surgically removed? Do they get to choose between this and the ankle bracelet thing?

Will the final application of this be like that thing in Minority Report where all the adverts are customised just for you? If so, we need V!

ID boycott

There's a new pledge on PledgeBank to boycott any company that wins the contract for ID cards. I've signed. I thought things had gone quiet on the ID card front.

But the "refuse to register" pledge succeeded:

I, Phil Booth, will refuse to register for an ID card and will donate £10 to a legal defence fund but only if 10,000 other people will also make this same pledge. Target met, pledge closed.

state terror

Student tasered for failing to produce ID - a student at UCLA was tasered by police (they have campus police???) for failing to produce identification. Whether or not he should have complied with the request for ID (it was a routine check because it was late at night, but he thought he had been singled out because of his Middle eastern appearance), the officers certainly used excessive force, as he had gone limp and laid down, which was not presenting a physical threat to the police.

In order to get into our campus library, your student card is automatically scanned at the door; you don't need police officers to go round checking IDs, even if it is late at night. It's fair enough requiring ID to access specific resources like libraries, but you should require it of everyone, not selected individuals.

There's also a video of the incident available from YouTube.