Manedwolf
member
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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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!
--------------------------------------------------------
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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