UK will have Universal ID Card in 2 years

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Manedwolf

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This is NOT the direction I want the US to go in, for sure.

A quote from other sources, already: "Claims that identity cards would help in the fight against terrorism were seemingly punctured when Charles Clarke, the home secretary, said they would not have stopped the July 7 London suicide attacks."

Imagine if everywhere you went, there were card scanners where your ID would be checked...and of COURSE, if you owned firearms, you'd be flagged. Oh, and in this UK version, there's a thousand pound (about $2000) fine for failing to report any change to address or statistics. Just watch if you DID report it but some bureaucrat forgot to enter it...whoops! Pay fine anyway! And just wait till the first time it's used in a nasty divorce to show how many times a guy went through checkpoints to go to a favorite pub...

Show papers! Schnell!

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ID cards in two years as rebellion fails

Concern remains over backbench discipline ahead of further key votes
Patrick Wintour, chief political correspondent
Tuesday February 14, 2006

Guardian
Millions of British citizens will be compulsorily required to hold an identity card and see their biometric details placed on a central database after the government last night fended off a backbench rebellion designed to derail the plan. Anyone applying for passports or immigration documents will in two years time be required to apply for an ID card.

Government whips had been anxious that they would suffer a fresh Commons defeat, adding to the sense of a government losing control, only a fortnight after the surprise reverse on religious hatred bill. But MPs voted by 310 votes to 279, a majority of 31, to reject the Lords demand that ID cards could not be brought in covertly by making them conditional on application for a passport. Twenty Labour backbenchers rebelled, about the same number as the first time MPs voted on the issue in October.

The result was greeted with dismay by civil liberties groups who accused the government of bludgeoning their backbenchers. The victory was a relief for Tony Blair ahead of a week in which he faces a further close vote on outlawing the glorification of terrorism tomorrow and the possibly chaotic sight of ministers voting different ways on a smoking ban today. The prime minister gave the Labour party a free vote on smoking after he had been unable to achieve an agreed cabinet line on the issue.

Ministers privately admit the whips operation is breaking down, with some backbench rebels no longer giving prior notice of their intention to defy the whip, a breach of the previous custom inside the parliamentary Labour party.

The sense of a government running out of luck had grown earlier in the day, when Mr Blair, due to fly back from South Africa early to attend the cliffhanger, was grounded in Cape Town when his chartered jet broke down on the runway. The pilot saw sparks flying from one of its three engines and then heard a bang as he was accelerating halfway down the runway. "If it had happened 20 or 30 seconds later things might have been different" said one of those on board.

With Mr Blair away, it was yesterday left to the home secretary Charles Clarke and the chancellor Gordon Brown to shore up the government case for identity cards. Mr Brown, not previously known as a public advocate of the cards, used a major speech on security to argue that such schemes "could not just help us to disrupt terrorists and criminals travelling on foreign and stolen identities, but more fundamentally protect each citizen's identity and prevent it being forged or stolen".

The main assault on the bill last night came over claims that the government was covertly introducing identity cards by making it a requirement that the British public and foreign residents living in the UK for more than three months apply for an ID card when they seek a new passport with the new biometric data.

The shadow home secretary David Davis complained that this represented "creeping covert compulsion", and the country was "sleepwalking towards the surveillance state". Mr Davis claimed that the ID card database would become "a target for every fraudster, terrorist, confidence trickster and computer hacker on the planet".

Last night, Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, the civil liberties watchdog, said: "The government will be relieved but it could only push this half-baked compromise through. Support for identity cards continues to wane in the country. New Labour's poll tax may be beaten yet."
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I'd be interested in having a reasonable conversation about this issue, minus the usual throwaway posts, if that is possible.

On topic - the only place my name crops up on the internet is on a pledge to refuse an ID card, and to contribute to a legal defense fund in the event of someone being prosecuted.

It shouldn't surprise any observer of politics, politics anywhere in the world, that the party in government was more concerned with maintaining an appearance of authority, more concerned with not being defeated in the house, than anything else. What I am disappointed with is the measure that makes ID cards compulsory for those applying for passports in two years time. We were assured that these cards would not be compulsory without another vote. Davis' term 'creeping compulsion' is dead on the money, not that I'm convinced that his party will rush to scrap them.

The Lords may yet reject this. Forcing the government to use the Parliament Act to push this through may get interesting.
 
i am very interested to know more details about expected uses for the card; i.e. where and when it must be presented. with that said, even if its intended uses were limited, it is a frighteneing step toward even scarier levels of state control over citizens. scannable driver's licenses are bad enough. if the US ever tries to push through such tripe as this, i'll violently oppose. my fiancee is from liverpool....i'll need to ask her how she feels about this. i'm under the impression that most brits don't really see this sort of thing as that big of a deal. am i off the mark? she's moving here soon. i think after a year or two here, she'll never consider going back.....because of this kind of nonsense.
 
Nobody seems to care. Opinion surveys say most respondents think it's a 'great idea. After all, if you've done nothing wrong you've got nothing to worry about' :mad:
 
Mk VII said:
Nobody seems to care. Opinion surveys say most respondents think it's a 'great idea. After all, if you've done nothing wrong you've got nothing to worry about' :mad:
Everyone in the UK, most likely, will have a little device implanted in their brain, to monitor for incorrect thoughts, any day now. The serfs will think it's a great idea, after all, serfs don't do much thinking, to begin with!:D
 
'K Iain - I'll try

This whole idea is to be able to 'track' people more and more.
You were told it would not be compulsory - It will - give it time.
If a plan to start tracking everyone everywhere all the time were suggested, there would be an outcry.
Insted, what happens is 'we do a little today and a little more tomorrow until the desired goal is reached' - it's called 'incrementalism' and it works quite well because no single advance is severe enough to cause an outcry/revolt/mass refusal etc.
As stated earlier, once it's compulsory, there will be an ever increasing number of places/instances where the ID will be required utiil eventually you won't be able to go to your own bathroom ( loo ! ) without 'swiping your card'.
During all of the steps, you will hear it justified as 'well, this isn't so bad', or 'this is a good thing, we NEED this' & the ever popular 'if you're not doing anything wrong, what's the problem ?'
The problem is that there are so MANY laws (overlapping/contradictory/unnecessary/just plain silly) that is almost IMPOSSIBLE to live without violating one or more from time to time and what's worse, as time goes on there will be more laws ( take bets on it ) because that's all governments that consist mainly of lawyers know how to do and were taught to do. How many laws have you EVER seen repealed ?
I've heard it said that it's impossible to track EVERYONE.
30 years ago, when the computer I can now fit in a attache case would have filled a building that may have been true - not any more. You can track enough of the people enough of the time to make everyone wary of being tracked.
( kinda like 'I don't know which home have guns so I must assume they all do' )
Once it's compulsory and people have 'adjusted', then will come the implants, for your own good of course. Cradle to grave 'coverage'.
And this will make a country more secure exactly how ??
Doesn't matter, that's not the real goal, just the excuse.
Secondly, there is no way in **** that these things will be copy/hack/counterfeit/alter/thieft ....... proof !
And just wait till you get 'confused ' with someone else and have no defense because ( I've heard it again and again being in the industry) THE COMPUTER SAID SO AND THEY DON'T MAKE MISTAKES !!!
The error rates in large databases is staggering and this will be one of the largest ( created by the lowest bidder !! ) with YOUR LIFE dependent on it's accuracy ( &diety help you !! )
This was tried on a much simpler scale without the technology back in the 30's & 40's by another country not far from you but for much the same reasons you are hearing now. We saw where that 'experiment' led. Don't be surprised.
 
Iain said:
..
It shouldn't surprise any observer of politics, politics anywhere in the world, that the party in government was more concerned with maintaining an appearance of authority, more concerned with not being defeated in the house, than anything else. .

Along that same vein of thought, I noticed that the article seemed to focus more on which political groups were winners or losers than the British electorate.
 
The question is when will they try this here in the US? I have heard of some people already having their Drivers License and State IDs scanned for various purposes but eventually. I would rather just leave MY ID at home then.
 
Iain said:
It shouldn't surprise any observer of politics, politics anywhere in the world, that the party in government was more concerned with maintaining an appearance of authority, more concerned with not being defeated in the house, than anything else.
This is not true IMO. The ID cards are what the predominant political forces want, and have wanted for a long time. I do hope there are enough in the House of Lords who do not share the same agenda and shoot this one down.

But the predominant forces in U.K. politics have a history of just to blatantly "keep trying and pushing it until it passes" when it comes to such issues.
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http://ussliberty.org
http://ssunitedstates.org
 
I'm not mean-sprited, but if I play Devil's advocate I have to ask:

Why should we care if they don't? If people don't care, if people are too stupid, too lazy, too inconsiderate of the rights of themselves and others, why should those people be rewarded with freedom? Is it logical to reward a baviour which you do not want to encourage?

If people had to fight, day and night, for hundreds of years to win freedoms, then is it not an accepted rule that fighting for freedom is directly related to enjoying it? Does the current world situation appear to show that enjoying freedom and not fighting for it results is disdain, and destruction of that freedom?

Why should those who care about freedoms fight for the rights of those who do not? Do the apathetic masses ridicule and scorn the individuals who campaign to increase the freedom of all? Why not take the masses at their word, and do to them as we wish to be done to us - leave them be, don't force our will on them?

Why not campaign individually for our individual freedoms, those of us who care for them? Let each person try and achieve the level of freedom they desire? Would not bribery of bureaucrats be a feasible system, whereby each can buy the freedoms they desire at the price they feel it is worth. Most people would spend very little money indeed, so one need not worry about freedom becoming a seller's market.

Finally, can a trend can be seen, a trend of rights and freedoms diminishing consistently over time? What is motivating this trend? What is the logical conclusion of this trend? Does the conclusion of the trend resemble the beginning of the time when rights and freedoms began to be won? Would this suggest it is better to expedite the loss of freedoms, so that restoration could happen sooner?


:)

Devil's advocate, mind you. Most of the questions I really wonder, not decided on.
 
The US is getting one, too. The new national standards for driver's licenses and state IDs, with biometric goodness, turn it into a national identity card. For an overview of the totalitarian aspects and inherent stupidity see Bruce Schneier, the RISKS Digest or Security Focus.
 
You are naive if you think a similar plan isnt already underway here.

We won't call it "national ID", but we have already decided to push for standardization of driver's licenses. It will still be issued by the state of your residence, but it will contain all the data that a national ID would, without the fuss of causing an outcry over "big brother".
 
It's already happening here - take a look at the Patriot Act - look for the naitonal drivers license. Our Republican friends in Congress just came to an agreement on this legislation - think of them when you line up to get your card. They're working hard to keep us safe.

Here's a synopsis of what it does -
- establishment of a national ID card, disguised as national standardization of drivers licensing;

- establishment of a national electronic database for birth and death certificates, with permanent identifying information assigned to each individual, such as a national ID number;

- biometric identifiers - including fingerprints, face recognition software photos, iris or retinal scans, and other private physical identification - for travel documents which would be used for security in domestic air travel as well as overseas travel.
 
Your papers....I said show me your papers
Ah, I see here you have green eyes.....you come.....yes, yes, your children too are detained.....and yes, your wife too.....no, not your dog.....but does it have green eyes too.
Will be an efficient way to enforce a new and improved class system.
 
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