Drogba, Robinho, Tevez and others find themselves carded

A bad day on and off the pitch for non-EU footballers, who have found themselves the victims of retrospective justice, each picking up cards in the near future.

However it won't be a 3 match suspension facing Didier Drogba, Carlos Tevez, Emmanuel Adebayor et al. No, this time they're being asked to give their fingerprints, a face-scan and personal details including their address and employment information.

The disciplinary committee on this occasion is not the FA or the Premier League, but instead our national government. And the card in question is, of course, the dreaded ID card.

As reported by the Evening Standard:

Foreign footballers face having to carry an identity card to prove who they are, it was announced today.

Professionals from outside the EU playing in the UK will have to apply for a card when they renew their visas, the Home Office said.

Currently holders of student and marriage visas are required to apply for a card when it expires. A total of 130,000 visas have been issued since the scheme was launched in November 2008.

But from today all skilled workers, as well as religious ministers and professional sportsmen and women, are included.

Dropping the football puns, there are three major problems here. The first, and most worrying, is that measures like this bring the ID card scheme closer to the government's orginal intention of full-scale implementation - something that must be avoided at all costs.

The second issue is the logic around making high profile figures provide such sensitive information. There is going to be a high premium for getting hold of the information and we know how leaky these databases can be.

Finally it needs to be asked: how much this is going to cost the UK taxpayer?

What is clear is that the ID card bandwagon shows no sign of slowing.

By Dylan Sharpe 

Comments

[tony]

can i encourage any hackers out there to explode the ID database in as many public ways as possible ... i'm sorry innocent people but the false logic of this scheme must be exposed ...

[Dave]

My IT developer friend is working on a DVLA project that will enable you to get a photo licence at the Post Office. Phase two involves fingerprint recognition....

ID cards aren't going away any time soon.