Please read, this affects EVERYBODY... You may
have heard that legislation creating compulsory
ID Cards passed a crucial stage in the House of
Commons. You may feel that ID cards are not
something to worry about, since we already have
Photo ID for our Passport and Driving License and
an ID Card will be no different to that. What you
have not been told is the full scope of this
proposed ID Card, and what it will mean to you
personally.

The proposed ID Card will be different from any
card you now hold. It will be connected to a
database called the NIR, (National Identity
Register), where all of your personal details
will be stored. This will include the unique
number that will be issued to you, your
fingerprints, a scan of the back of your eye, and
your photograph. Your name, address and date of
birth will also obviously be stored there. There
will be spaces on this database for your
religion, residence status, and many other
private and personal facts about you.

There is unlimited space for every other detail
of your life on the NIR database, which can be
expanded by the Government with or without
further Acts of Parliament.

By itself, you might think that this register is
harmless, but you would be wrong to come to this
conclusion. This new card will be used to check
your identity against your entry in the register
in real time, whenever you present it to 'prove
who you are'. Every place that sells alcohol or
cigarettes, every post office, every pharmacy,
and every Bank will have an NIR Card Terminal,
(very much like the Chip and Pin Readers that are
everywhere now) into which your card can be
'swiped' to check your identity. Each time this
happens, a record is made at the NIR of the time
and place that the Card was presented. This means
for example, that there will be a government
record of every time you withdraw more than £99
at your bank - who now demand ID for these
transactions. Every time you have to prove that
you are over 18, your card will be swiped, and a
record made at the NIR. Restaurants and off
-licences will demand that your card is swiped so
that each receipt shows that they sold alcohol to
someone over 18, and that this was proved by the
access to the NIR, indemnifying them from
prosecution.

Private businesses are going to be given access
to the NIR Database. If you want to apply for a
job, you will have to present your card for a
swipe. If you want to apply for a London
Underground Oyster Card, or a supermarket loyalty
card, or a driving license you will have to
present your ID Card for a swipe. The same goes
for getting a telephone line or a mobile phone or
an internet account. Oyster, DVLA, BT and Nectar
(for example) all run very etailed databases of
their own. They will be allowed access to the
NIR, just as every other business will be. This
means that each of these entities will be able to
store your unique number in their database, and
place all your travel, phone records, driving
activities and detailed shopping habits under
your unique NIR number.

These databases, which can easily fit on a
storage device the size of your hand, will be
sold to third parties either legally or
illegally. It will then be possible for a non
governmental entity to create a detailed dossier
of all your activities. Certainly, the government
will have clandestine access to all of them,
meaning that they will have a complete record of
all your movements, from how much and when you
withdraw from your bank account to what
medications you are taking, down to the level of
what sort of bread you eat - all accessible via a
single unique number in a central database.

This is quite a significant leap from a simple ID
Card that shows your name and face. Most people
do not know that this is the true character and
scope of the proposed ID Card. Whenever the
details of how it will work are explained to
them, they quickly change from being ambivalent
towards it. The Government is going to compel you
to enter your details into the NIR and to carry
this card. If you and your children want to
obtain or renew your passports, you will be
forced to have your fingerprints taken and your
eyes scanned for the NIR, and an ID Card will be
issued to you whether you want one or not. If you
refuse to be fingerprinted and eye scanned, you
will not be able to get a passport. Your ID Card
will, just like your passport, not be your
property. The Home Secretary will have the right
to revoke or suspend your ID at any time, meaning
that you will not be able to withdraw money from
your Bank Account, for example, or do anything
that requires you to present your government
issued ID Card.

The arguments that have been put forwarded in
favor of ID Cards can be easily disproved. ID
Cards will not stop terrorists; every Spaniard
has a compulsory ID Card as did the Madrid
Bombers. ID Cards will not eliminate benefit
fraud', which in any case, is small compared to
the astronomical cost of this proposal, which
will be measured in billions according to the
LSE. This scheme exists solely to exert total
surveillance and control over the ordinary free
British Citizen, and it will line the pockets of
the companies that will create the computer
systems at the expense of your freedom, privacy
and money.

If you did not know the full scope of the
proposed ID Card Scheme before and you are as
unsettled as I am at what it really means to you,
to this country and its way of life, I urge you
to email or photocopy this and give it to your
friends and colleagues.

The Bill has proceeded to this stage due to the
lack of accurate and complete information on this
proposal being made public. Hand to hand, we can
inform the entire nation if everyone who receives
this passes it on.

Please make sure you do this.

Shit scary stuff. I knew the proposal would be invading our privacy somewhat but I didn't know to that extent. If implemented it's yet another move towards a bigbrother state in which everybodys privacy is invaded in the hope of curtailing the criminal activities of a few. Total bullcrap!!

I predict that educated people without any special interests in working for the government will very shortly be leaving this country in droves. The extent of what currently goes on, and what is planned to occur, in this country and the ever-increasing authoritarian nature of the government make the US Patriot Act seem like a minor nuisance in comparison.

Where to, Andrew?
Where is any better?

i don't get people here, i really don't, you complain about crime and how bad it is, but then the government does all it can, and you complain,
i am happy for the government to invade my privacy if i know that i am safe when i walk the streets at night, or when i get a wife, to know she can walk the streets at night,
you can either have a crime free nation but with invasion of privacy, or an anarchist reigeme with no government interfering but crime being rife
you cannot have both, when will people realise that

Absolute bollocks. The government have demonstrated time and again that they are not particularly interested in tackling crime (unless perhaps you are a motorist who did thirty-two miles an hour in a 30 zone, or if you attempted to defend yourself against a real criminal and he came off worse for wear), and instead are more interested in monitoring and interfering in every single aspect of their non-criminal subjects' lives. Hence ID cards.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/arti...in_page_id=1770

Well that's fine. You may be happy but the rest of us living in a democratic society resent our privacy being invaded/exploited by the government and then there after potentially made available to any organization with a tenner on the hip.
Can you put forward any real-world evidence that would suggests you'll be any 'safer to walk the streets' if this goes ahead?

id cards in themselves will not stop crime, what they will do is enable the government to have easy access to our dna, biometric data etc, which firstly i can see helping if you are admitted to hospital enabling easy access to medical records, but also at a crime scene, if we have as many peoples dna as possible it will make it easier to catch criminals and rule out suspects, what is it you hate about the government knwoing this about you,

it will help prevent crime from what i can see, so i see them as a good idea, the next step i can see is cameras on evry street covering the mvoements of everybody, that is the next step that i agree with

So will chemically castrating everyone on the sex offenders list, but there are civil rights laws preventing that.............. Saying that it may help prevent crime is really no vindication for the gross infringement on the privacy of law abiding public.

actually castrating those on the sex offenders list is a good idea, why should good people like you and me suffer because others do wrong,
if criminals are punished and crimes are prevented, then i am happy, a bit of harsh punishment never hurt anyone, you may say what if they get the wrong guy, then haveing id cards and cameras evreywhere will make that less likely,
at the moment i am tempted when i am older to commit robbery in an art gallerybecause it seems exciting and clever, why, because i know in britian i will get about 2 years maximum, probably less, however, if i knew the government was watching and i would get branded or hard labour, i would no way commit crime,
we need to deter criminals and prevent crime

See, and I don't steal, not because I'd get caught, but because I believe stealing is wrong.
I could steal all kinds of things and get away with it. It's basic shared morality that holds societies together, not omnipotent government oversight.

actually, i know what you mean, wherever i go, i see how lapse security is, i think, right now i could steal, and i don't because it is morally wrong, my point before is that i would be tempted to steal not for the money, i would give it back, but for the excitement, and the reason i would is because i know that if i did get caught i would virtually get away with it

you are right, you don't steal because it is wrong, so why not punish those that do wrong, if somebody gets beaten, whipped brander, etc because they have commited a crime, i feel no guilt because they aRE WRONG,

i don't see a problem with government punishment

Hmmm maybe some of you think im blocked but, i really dont care about these, people who think someones going to actully get one of these terminals and be able to look at the entire database for everyone in the UK is just paranoid

About castrating offenders, this is a good idea, and better if there was an entire "eye for and eye" system, You kill someone, you get death sentence, You take away someones dignity, they take away your physicly
If you steal something, you have 100X the value of what you stole taken away from you

Castrating sex offenders is a good idea.

But on the subject, everyone keeps telling me I'm paranoid. "Nothing's gonna happen Andrew. You're a paranoid freak, Andrew! You think too much, Andrew! Don't worry, Bush won't be president anymore, Andrew!"

Read this:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:H.J.RES.24.IH:

Official government site, hence the ".gov" in it. How come this hasn't been on the news? It's gonna be passed sneakily, so nobody can object. If it passes, consider Bush the lifetime president. Wait until the nuclear attack on the US, and watch how quick Bush is given a third term for "doing such a wonderful job leading our country through a time of crisis." They offered Guilliani a third term as New York City's mayor, but he turned it down. Why wouldn't they do it with Bush?

Keep calling me paranoid. But remember what I said when you're in a concentration camp for expressing dislike for Bush or Blair.

Just so that yall know government mandated DNA testing is generally bullshit and less accurate then the flip of a coin (and has been shown to be wrong time and time again) and the governement won't pay the cost for more accurate testing. This means that if someone commits a crime that could hurt the countries reputation (like a terrorist attack) they will just run a DNA check and chuck some one in jail even if the check is a false positive, just so that they look like they are doing something.

The Panopticon.....

Ben

you mean a prison where everybody can watch you but you do not know you are being watched,
i don't know if you are referring to it literally or as a metaphor, i will adress both,
a)the idea of a prison structure like that is a good idea, phycsological torture, i like it,
if you are reffering to a society like that then yes, it could create a sense of paranoia, but you wouldn't do any wrong, i sure as hell woud'nt, it is the only way to deal with society,
god bless Bentham the utilitarian

What you advocate is the complete removal of privacy (I was using it as a metaphor for the way wider society is going).....No privacy = No rights, No rights = being found dead in a ditch 20 years after the fact.....

You advocate 'not doing any wrong' - Do you have any realisation that society moves to 'doing good' via 'doing wrong'? Today's 'right' was yesterdays wrong - Nelson Mandella for example - what you advocate would lead to a stagnant and opressed as well as a wholly conservative society....where change would be denied. I want no part of it.

Ben

Actually the Panopticon is the opposite of that, its where nobody can watch you and know you are being watched.

A) can you prove to me that every inmate deserves that torture
In a society like that you have no free will, in a society like that your conciousness is on the most basic level nulled and thus it could never, would never work, the metaphysical collective concious of the people is stronger that any physical structure or idea, something that most rulers don't understand and is, and has been, the downfall of every civilazation.

what i adovate, and what i want to create is a society where doing good is rewarded and doing bad is punished, the only way to diffrentiate between two means a reduction in privacy, it is not doing wrong, it is punishing wrongdoers, i see no problem with it whatsoever,