National ID cards - good idea?

[Grant(aka_eddy)]

Just lost my passport so gutted that those have gone up to £70 plus!

As for i.d. cards....in principal i am not only happy to carry one but think they're a very good idea. If done well, of course.

However i have absolutely no faith in the systems that will research, implement and monitor their use. I doubt they will be good enough for their intended purpose, i think the cost will be astronomical and i don't trust that much data will be handled with the correct degree of confidentiality and sensitivity.

In short...good idea but they'll **** it up....badly.

[Gringo]

But they do tap the phones, and they do monitor emails and internet usage - and no one objects because to do so is seen to be supporting or least aiding the terrorists. Before you say ID cards are OK, you should first demand some reason for them and some form of cost-benefit analysis whilst all this money is being poured down the drain.

The government trumpets free speech while trampling on it

On Monday new regulations came into force, after a personal decree by the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, that give nearly 800 public bodies the right to access your telephone records - mobile phone and landline - and make it compulsory for all phone companies to keep those records. So the data of your calls and text messages may be accessed by any damned busybody in any agency stretching from the Scottish Ambulance Service Board, the Food Standards Agency, the Environment Agency to every local council in the country. Naturally, the intelligence services and police are provided with the usual easy pass into your private life.

You’re better safe than free - the mantra of the Whitehall Taliban

Meanwhile the makers of the film, The Bourne Ultimatum, needed a location where a character could be watched by police as he moved step by step about the city. Did they use Moscow or Berlin or New York? No, they used London. They did so because Britain is the world capital of surveillance, deploying a fifth of the global stock of closed-circuit television cameras, even though the Home Office admitted last week that they were next to useless.

I accept that there is a case for ID cards: a few careless fraudsters and immigrants might be stopped from cheating on social security but this is not remotely worth £12 billion of public money. The case for a nationwide medical computer is equally trivial. It is that paramedics might give the wrong drug to an accident victim who has forgotten his allergies but can remember his NHS Pin number. Nobody balances a cost above £15 billion against the benefit, let alone against the general infringement of privacy and the certainty of computer hacking by insurers and others. In all these cases, ministers merely deploy the dictator’s gambit that the “innocent have nothing to fear”.

What have they got to do with ID cards? Well....

Each new straw may seem sensible in itself until suddenly we have broken the camel’s back. We find that we have crossed the line from a mature, responsible democracy into an arthritic and fearful police state. Aspects of British public administration are reminiscent of the Taliban.

The only real defence of Blair’s “liberty, democracy and freedom” is to demand, constantly and tediously, that each extension of state power be justified as proportionate, cost-effective and consonant with these values. The onus should be on the executive to justify intrusion and repression, not on individuals to resist it. There is no way that ID cards pass this test.

[drat01]

Breaking news cover your bedroom in silver foil to stop them listening to you via their super mega power satellites

[nrogers]

Well Ian, the technology is avialable to read a newspaper from space, so what you are saying is not that far fetched!

[drat01]

Well Ian, the technology is avialable to read a newspaper from space, so what you are saying is not that far fetched!

Reminds me of a Simpsons episode where the MLB are listening into Bart via their satellite

Technology is there to do a lot of things Nick, now is it really capable of doing it though to everyone and anyone? Nah dont think so, unless of course the James Bond dirty tape brigade are around then anything is possible

[OldFart]

I live in Spain and used to have an ID card (residence and work permit but a dinky little plastic card with my photo, date of birth, address and tax number). Now, because there has been such a lot of immigration and the system had virtually broken down, they have speeded things up by only issuing ID cards to Spanish Citizens (of course) and foreigners making their first application.

I am not a Spanish Citizen and I already had an ID card.

The last time I went to renew mine it was half an hour in a queue, 5 minutes with a clerk and only one visit. A tremendous advance.

One problem. No ID card any more for those renewing.

Just a flimsy sheet of paper which confirms those thing a passport doesn't - tax number principally. Seeing as by law some kind of ID must be carried by everyone at all times, I now have to carry my passport everywhere. Passports are bulky things. This pisses me off. :cry:

If I lived in the UK I'd say yes to ID cards.

[nrogers]

But they can, and that scares me! Nothing to do with conspiracies... but you can use humour and sarcasm if you like, but self denial is delusional mate!

[Risso]

But they can, and that scares me! Nothing to do with conspiracies... but you can use humour and sarcasm if you like, but self denial is delusional mate!

It really winds me up these people who don't even live in the UK moaning abou...er hang on a second :oops:

[Jon]

I dont mind having an ID card.

I DO mind having to pay for it

my position too roberto.

[drat01]

But they can, and that scares me! Nothing to do with conspiracies... but you can use humour and sarcasm if you like, but self denial is delusional mate!

Nick get real - you are a clever enough bloke to realise that monitoring the activities of Nick Rogers ex-UK resident now living in NZ is not going to happen, unless of course you give them (and again who are them - New World Order, the CIA, The Salvation Army? ) enough reason to check on a few things about you and your lifestyle.

[drat01]

But they can, and that scares me! Nothing to do with conspiracies... but you can use humour and sarcasm if you like, but self denial is delusional mate!

It really winds me up these people who don't even live in the UK moaning abou...er hang on a second :oops:

Risso can you please get dressed and release that sheep from your back bed room - We are watching you

[Jon]

Depriving everybody of another chunk of their civil liberties.

how would ID cards do that Mart? :?

[bickster]

Depriving everybody of another chunk of their civil liberties.

how would ID cards do that Mart? :?

Wait until you get arrested for not carrying one around, then decide Jon. You'll be arrested for the crime of solely not carrying around something that you've paid 300 quid for, I'd only wear 300 quid watch on special occasions

And before any body says "it won't be illegal to carry the ID card on you at all times"

I'll just say "thin end of the wedge"

[Risso]

That's precisely right Bicks, "thin end of the wedge". They may be fairly benign to begin with, but once they're in, they'll never be repealed and then bit by bit they can do what they want with them, all the time hiding behind the maxim "If you've got nothing to hide....."

Dangerous and unnecessary.

[Gringo]

IT is a chilling, dystopian account of what Britain will look like 10 years from now: a world in which Fortress Britain uses fleets of tiny spy-planes to watch its citizens, of Minority Report-style pre-emptive justice, of an underclass trapped in sink-estate ghettos under constant state surveillance, of worker drones forced to take on the lifestyle and values of the mega-corporation they work for, and of the super-rich hiding out in gated communities constantly monitored by cameras and private security guards.

This Orwellian vision of the future was compiled on the orders of the UK's information commissioner - the independent watchdog meant to guard against government and private companies invading the privacy of British citizens and exploiting the masses of information currently held on each and every one of us - by the Surveillance Studies Network, a group of academics.

So it's not just the tin-foil hat brigade who seem to think there's a creeping regression of privacy, freedom and liberties, but indeed the bloke appointed by the government to try and safeguard those. Clicky....

So the votes are 9-9. Of those owners who expressed a preference, the people saying no said:

* too expensive;

* invasion of privacy;

* criminalising of dissenters;

* offers no real or tangible benefits.

The people saying yes said:

* it's not an invasion of privacy (not really a pro-argument);

* they're smaller than passports;

* we're all fruitloops.

So whilst I accept we are indeed all fruitloops, we are really only left with in argument in favour so far - that they are easier to carry than a passport. Interesting to note though that one of the EU nations that does have ID cards is rolling back the requirement to carry one.

[nrogers]

But they can, and that scares me! Nothing to do with conspiracies... but you can use humour and sarcasm if you like, but self denial is delusional mate!

It really winds me up these people who don't even live in the UK moaning abou...er hang on a second :oops:

Not this again :roll:

[Risso]

But they can, and that scares me! Nothing to do with conspiracies... but you can use humour and sarcasm if you like, but self denial is delusional mate!

It really winds me up these people who don't even live in the UK moaning abou...er hang on a second :oops:

Not this again :roll:

Blimey Nick, surely you can tell that was a joke mate? Point was that I don't live in the UK anymore, and was moaning about them. Ah, never mind, must be getting late over there eh!

[nrogers]

But they can, and that scares me! Nothing to do with conspiracies... but you can use humour and sarcasm if you like, but self denial is delusional mate!

It really winds me up these people who don't even live in the UK moaning abou...er hang on a second :oops:

Not this again :roll:

Blimey Nick, surely you can tell that was a joke mate? Point was that I don't live in the UK anymore, and was moaning about them. Ah, never mind, must be getting late over there eh!

Opps sorry mate, am feeling pretty rubbish, sick as a dog... went straight over my head :oops:

[Jon]

at this point in time, i cannot see how the introduction of National ID cards would stop me from doing something (legal) that i would previously have been able to do.

That would be one measure of civil liberties.

OK, so i may be monitored or "tracked" more easily. But that is not IMO impinging on my civil liberties. i would still be at liberty to go about my business as before.

Unless i have missed something?

the only liberty being taken away from me would be the £XXX amount i'd have to pay for the thing!

[Gringo]

And the benefits you get from carrying the card? More specifically, what benefits do you get that justify the cost (£18bn-£30bn according to the LSE).