Big Brother Watch

Immigrant or criminal?

By Maria Fort

Recently I landed at Heathrow Airport after a trip to the US.  Upon returning to London, I was looking forward to getting to my flat and preparing to go back to work the next morning.  I was home and I could relax after a long flight.  But first, immigration.  Did I mention I’m foreign?

After waiting in the queue, I made my way to the UKBA officer to whom I handed my passport, landing card and residence permit, or more accurately, my foreign national ID card.  The agent briefly looked at my passport to see that the photo matched my ID card before closing it, putting it down on the desk and running my card, complete with microchip, through an electronic reader.   Then without looking at my face, she asked me a number of questions while eyeing her computer where my personal details were flashing across the screen.  Details that wouldn’t be taken from a citizen unless arrested for a crime.

Last year when the coalition government came into power, it only took days to announce the scrapping of a national identity card scheme on the grounds that it was expensive, obtrusive and violated the civil liberties of law-abiding Britons.  So what is the difference between a law-abiding citizen and a law-abiding resident?  I filled in the paperwork as required.  I met all the criteria.  I stood in line for hours to have my fingerprints, photos and personal details taken by a government agency bent on criminalising those who follow the rules.  ID cards for foreign nationals are meant to target tougher border controls, but fail to address the estimated 180,000-plus people that have overstayed visas since 2007, effectively violating the rights of only those that obey the terms of their stay in the UK.  So how do ID cards resolve the problem then?

They don’t.  But we knew that.  Only days ago the UKBA was termed ‘not fit for purpose’ by Keith Vaz MP and a Home Affairs select committee report expresses deep concerns with the agency’s effectiveness.  ID cards don’t prevent illegal immigration.  ID cards don’t prevent people overstaying visas.  ID cards criminalise the individuals following immigration law to the letter.  Scrap the card, do unto your hard-working visitors as you would to your nationals.  Respect my rights as much as I respect your system.  Target the policy problems, not the limits of intrusion.

Students at De Montfort University could be placed under constant surveillance

Students at the De Montfort University in Leicester have raised concerns about a new chip being placed in their ID cards which monitors the attendance at lectures and tutorials.

The system works by using the Wi-Fi network around the campus to track the location of all students with a chipped ID card, the network will then log who is attending classes and who is not. The plan was discussed and subsequently approved at a meeting of the university’s executive board, and a further consultation will now occur.

Although many universities use cards to swipe in and out of lectures for security reasons, this represents a worrying deviation, with all students effectively monitored at all times when on campus. This could potentially be used to track the movements of those involved in protest groups or minority groups wrongly suspected of being involved in terrorism.

English language and media student Manisha Hellan, 19, said:

“You come to university to be treated like an adult, not a child. As long as you get your work done, whether you go to lectures or not should be your choice. I understand the reasoning behind it but my concern is what else it could be used for – it's a bit Big Brother.”

Aaron Porter, the outgoing president of the National Union of Students, believes the system is open to abuse. He said:

“Those who stand to pay increasing fees for the privilege of studying will baulk at the prospect of being treated like inmates under surveillance. Software allowing universities to keep constant tabs on students has the potential to be abused.”

“Any university seeking to teach such a practical lesson in Orwell studies has its work cut out in seeking to convince students that forced exposure to round-the-clock monitoring will not infringe on their privacy or dignity.”

A DMU spokeswoman responded:

"We are currently exploring whether or not to use an electronic student attendance monitoring system. No decision has yet been made."

Considering De Montfort University have opted to charge the maximum £9,000 fees from 2012, some students may feel that this is a high price to pay to be under constant surveillance. A simple swipe card is sufficient to monitor attendance if there are serious concerns about security, but this is a step too far and Big Brother Watch would like to see it cancelled before it comes into effect. The system is hardly fool proof in any case, as one person could take 10 cards into a lecture hall to give the impression that all 10 students are present.

Links of the day: Tuesday 24th May 2011

Alex Deane: We must welcome the report of the Red Tape Taskforce as a step towards making volunteering less bureaucratic

Wikipedia founder opens new front in privacy battle

Identity scheme echoes ID cards, say campaigners

A whole new era for cookies begins tomorrow

Your guide to the EU Privacy Directive

Do-not-track off to a slow start, Mozilla adds support for Android

LinkedIn slashes cookie lifespan after research exposes security flaws

Exploited Hotmail bug stole email without warning

PlayStation Network breach will cost Sony $171m

Privacy, the Press and Twitter: some uncomfortable truths

One Year On: The Coalition and Civil Liberties

Big Brother Watch has today (11th May) released a research paper outlining the progress the Coalition Government has made on civil liberties issues during its first year in office.

The paper concludes that, while real progress has been made, many of the Coalition's promises to roll back the power of the state remain unfulfilled.

Click here to download the report

Commenting on the report, Big Brother Watch Director Daniel Hamilton said:

"The Coalition has some real achievements to speak off. 

"Ministers should be congratulated for taking steps to scrap ID cards and remove the profiles of the one million innocent people held on the national DNA database.   They should also be praised for doing away with the ContactPoint database of children’s details and reforming the criminal record check regime.

"They do, however, have more work to do. 

"Police stop and search powers remain in place, Control Orders remain virtually unreformed and there has been no opt-out from the European Arrest Warrant.  When it comes to E-Borders, the Summary Care Record and Intercept Modernisation Programme, they have continued to implement the previous government’s policies – warts and all." 

ID card report: "Umm... errr... we were... er... doing other stuff"

Last month, this blog brought you news of the Home Office's disgraceful decision to delay the publication of the National Identity Service Independent Assurance Panel's report into ID cards. The report, which concluded, the ID card system had been compromised by poor design and management, was submitted to the Home Office in December 2009, modified on 4 January this year and then published online in January.

Unwilling to accept this unneccessary delay in releasing the report to the general public, BBW submitted a freedom of information request to the Home Office.

The query, submitted by former BBW Director Alex Deane, was simple: "I wish to know why, when the report is dated “December 2009”, it was not released until 4 January 2011".

The response, however, was laughable:

"The ISAP annual reports have always dealt with calendar years and generally take two or three months to compile and be reviewed, and consequently have been published in the spring following the year to which they refer.

"In the case of the 2009 annual report, authorship of the report had transferred internally, and this, combined with other organisational changes which were happening at the time, made the report slightly delayed. By the time the report was nearing completion, other work assumed a higher priority."

For those unable to translate Home Office-speak, their response appears to indicate that they basically had other things to do and didn't consider it important enough to release to the general public in a timely manner.  How reassuring... 

ID cards ceased to be valid in the United Kingdom at 00:00 on 22nd January.

At midnight, ID cards will cease to be valid

At midnight tonight, ID cards will cease to be valid means by which to prove your identity or to travel inside the Euopean Union. By the end of next week, the National Identity Register - which was designed to hold the details of card holders - will be deleted.

Damian Green MP, the minister with responsibility for the abolition of ID cards, made the following statement.

"Laying ID cards to rest demonstrates the government's commitment to scale back the power of the state and restore civil liberties.

"It is about the people having trust in the government to know when it is necessary and appropriate for the state to hold and use personal data, and it is about the government placing their trust in the common-sense and responsible attitude of the people"

Amen to that.

Damian is a contributor to the new Big Brother Watch book, which can be purchased on Amazon for only £6.49.

The state never makes mistakes... right?

One of the enduring (and tremendously) harmful myths of our time is that the state is somehow more efficient than the rest of society (or, worse, somehow infallible). That absurdity underpinned the fatally flawed ID Card scheme, as discussed yesterday, and with absolutely no lesson learned, it went on to - and continues to - underpin the monolithic NHS Summary Care Record.

Behind these new schemes is the idea that they never make mistakes with existing databases, ho ho! Click on the "database" button in the cloud to the right and you'll see the fallacy of that notion, and here's another little pearler spotted by a BBW reader:

Friday, January 7

THERE seemed to be a bit of confusion for one gentleman in the [Bedford] magistrates’ court today. He wasn’t sure why his driving licence had suddenly been revoked, when he hadn’t done anything wrong. It turns out his brother – who he incidentally doesn’t have contact with – has a rather similar Christian name to his, starting with the same initial.

‘Admin mistake’ the court called it. I think this man may have had another name for it.

Quite.

By Alex Deane

Hat tip: PM

ID cards were EVEN WORSE than we thought - and the Home Office hid the evidence

In a story covered very well in a witty post by our friends over at TechEye, it has emerged that the Home Office hid the parlous state of its Identity Card Scheme from the public - it withheld publication of a report by the project's oversight board in the run up to the 2010 general election (when, you'll remember, some sort of card remained Labour policy).

Disgracefully, the Home Office only slipped out the final report of the Independent Scheme Advisory Panel (ISAP) this week, more than a year after it was written, after the scheme had finally bitten the dust under the Coalition.

The ostensibly "independent" report, which reveals how the ID system had been compromised by poor design and management, was submitted to the Home Office in December 2009, modified on 4 January this year (by a person or persons unknown), before finally being published on the Home Office web site.

The report repeated the same warnings ISAP had given the Home Office every year since the system blueprint was published in December 2006 by Liam Byrne and Joan Ryan, then Home Office Ministers, and James Hall, then head of the Identity and Passport Service (IPS).

The key elements of the ID scheme's feasibility were still being clarified, nearly four years after it was approved by an Act of Parliament. Foremost among them were inadequate data security precautions and the threat posed by the systems' complexity.

ID system specifications had not been completed, said the report; doubts remained about what benefit the government aimed to get from ID cards; clarifying what ID cards were for might mean yet further specification changes... and on the litany of failure went.

But the project was already troubled by too many variables. As per the write-up at Computer Weekly:

Alan Hughes, ISAP chair and non-executive IPS director, said, "The combination of multiple suppliers, multiple government departments and agencies ... together with the sheer volume of change planned could make the schedule ... unmanageable; particularly so as more detail of requirements is understood.

"The panel considers this complexity is a threat to the success of the programme, of cost escalation and delivery of the full capability."

The scheme's suppliers had been inundated with change requests, the infamous contractual adjustments that derive from poorly specified systems and widely blamed for the financial, organisational and technical failure of large computer systems.

The contractual arrangements were also insecure, suppliers were using different development methodologies and the IPS was restructuring.

The suppression of this report is absolutely disgraceful. It follows a pattern of recent behaviour from government agencies, who withhold information harmful to their reputation despite the clear obligation on them to be open with public data – after all, we pay for their activities and for these reports, and such reports are about aspects of the way we all live and will be governed in the future.

This not only reveals a dishonest approach to information – it also reveals typical administrative incompetence with large, intrusive databases. Government departments constantly want more power over us, but are constantly too incompetent to use it.

By Alex Deane

Clegg's speech: a waste of time

I attended Nick Clegg's speech this morning, and discussed it on Victoria Derbyshire's show on Radio 5 Live today. Over at Public Service I have written an article which puts the argument more fully. In case you're interested, I thought I'd reproduce it here:

Perhaps against our better judgment, I and a number of other civil libertarians trudged through the rain to listen to Nick Clegg's speech at the Institute of Government today. What a waste of time it was.

One appreciates that today is the Deputy Prime Minister's birthday, but there's still no excuse for giving a speech so entirely without substance as this. Effectively, this was the governmental equivalent of the boy who cried "wolf" – he called a press conference, but had nothing to say. As I said with praise at the time, the mood music on offer when the coalition was formed was extremely encouraging – but now, fully seven months on, it is profoundly depressing for anyone who cares about freedom to find all-but exactly the same music on offer, with no substantive additions at all.

Mr Clegg spent a great deal of time talking about the expansion of Freedom of Information, which although hardly revolutionary is significant and welcome, and on libel and defamation reform, on which there was some substance. The trouble there is that that latter issue falls squarely in Ken Clarke's patch, not Clegg's, but – his desparate team must have thought – so what? The DPM desperately needed something substantive to say. And he'd obviously been denied any meat – at all – on the issues everyone was there for, i.e. our profoundly illiberal anti-terror legislation, under which hundreds of thousands of people are stopped and searched at random without a single terror-related arrest, people are kept under detention for a month before they're even charged, and individuals can be put on control orders indefinitely. All of this, he said, fell under the purview of the Home Secretary, and he wouldn't presume to say anything about it – peculiar, one might think, for the man supposedly in charge of the Freedom Bill, especially on the Control Orders front.

The case for action on this is plain, and not only because the Liberal Democrats were so clear and principled on the issue before the election. Control Orders are completely immoral. If you're a victim of this pernicious form of house arrest, not only are you denied sight of the evidence against you, you're not even told the nature of the accusation. So there's simply no way to defend yourself from it. When the Government can restrict liberty like this on a whim, it is not enough, on the one hand, to speak in head-shaking, deep-toned, pseudo-profound terms about the "grave threat" we face, and on the other offer assurances that the police and security services "know what they're doing" (just ask Jean-Charles De Menezes or Ian Tomlinson what they'd make of such assertions). At times like these, faced with an objectively less significant threat than this country faced throughout the 1970s, the kneejerk reaction on show from the last government is truly the greatest threat posed to our free society.

Such a threat is far from merely theoretical. Blame my barristerial background, perhaps, but I'm old-fashioned enough to believe in the presumption of innocence, and in trying people accused of crimes in courts, then finding them innocent or guilty. Such basic principles were gravely harmed by the last government, and once such bright line principles are breached then the freedoms of all of us are threatened.

Though he talks a good game, Clegg has hitherto done and is doing precisely nothing to reverse this illiberality. There were lofty words on offer on covert surveillance for absurd things and on our DNA database, the largest per capita in the world, with the details of more than an innocent people on it. There was even a single line about limiting the power of representatives of the state to enter private property.It was all rather familiar [for BBW followers...]. But on absolutely none of it was there any specificity. So one fears that the delays, reviews and empty speeches (co-ordinated with a suspiciously well-timed parade of supposedly impartial grandees coming out against Control Orders, and a remarkably coincidental escalation in the terror level we are told we face) are taking place as a prelude to substituting effectively the same kinds of regime on all of these issues. This is why, for example, one views Clegg's preferred formula, "Control Orders cannot survive in their current form", with such suspicion. We are very likely, I fear, to see a cosmetic change offered as a sop to the Liberal Democrats, with no real genuine action at all.

I do not allege that Clegg is actually happy with this. Perhaps he is making all manner of uncomfortable compromises. But is he actually right to do so? Of course the Lib Dems are enjoying the trappings of power, but Mr Clegg has to ask himself – is he truly the Deputy Prime Minister, or not? If he is, then this kind of delay by others on his fundamental manifesto pledges, leading to his excuse-riddled inaction, is simply inexcusable. If he's not… then what's he doing in the Coalition?

By Alex Deane

Brazil adopts new national ID card registry

While some regular visitors to the blog offer the occasional grumble about Big Brother Watch's reporting on events the United Kingdom, we make no apologies for highlighting encroachments on freedom and civil liberties, wherever they occur.

On 1st January, Brazilian President Luis Inácio "Lula" da Silva left office, handing power to his hand-picked successor and former Chief of Staff Dilma Rousseff.  The former shoe-shine boy left office with approval ratings close to 90% and a series of achievements in the sphere of poverty-reduction that have been widely praised by those across the ideological divide.

Sadly, one of Lula's final acts as President of Brazil was to unveil a new Civil Identity Registry to replace the country's current ID card system.  While the existing Brazilian scheme is relatively poorly enforced, the same cannot be said for the new cards announced by the outgoing Lula administration:

"All Brazilians will each be registered under a unique national number, which will avoid registration of individuals in more than one state. The card will come with a chip containing the person's fingerprints, Internal Revenue Service number, and voter card number; information on gender, nationality, date of birth, and filiation; and photograph, signature, and issuing registrar"

Having toiled under an oppressive military dictatorship for decades up to 1985, there are few in Brazil that can recall a time when the Police were not able to summarily demand members of the public produce ID cards on request. 

The country is, however, firmly civil libertarian in nature with the increasingly middle-class population demanding more transparency in government, privacy laws and protections against the power of the country's police force. 

It's high time the fight against ID cards took hold.  Brazilians, Big Brother Watch is here to help... Please do contact us.

By Daniel Hamilton.

Anti-ID campaigners foiled by lack of ID

On Saturday I was out campaigning with NO2ID. The German market in Leeds is always busy with people, so we picked our spot and set up a public information stall. We’d just finished putting the finishing touch on the festival decorations to accompany our stock of leaflets when I realised I’d left my petition sheets at home.

Still this shouldn’t be a problem right? I’m in a city centre and there are plenty of places to print out a document from an email. I set off in haste to the library around the corner knowing Libraries these days have banks of computers available for use. I go up to the desk and I’m asked if I have a Library card, I don’t but that’s fine you can log on as a guest. Great my problems are sorted....... but wait I’m then being asked to produce ID.

Suddenly I’m in the absurd position of being asked to produce ID to print out some NO2ID petition sheets. I’m probably the wrong person to ask for ID, when challenged to show I’m legally old enough to buy booze (or teaspoons, crackers and other dangerous items) I respond by challenging the seller to demonstrate they are old enough to sell it to me.

Guest post: Clegg re-affirms his commitment to Civil Liberties

In a keynote speech at the Political Studies Association/Hansard Society Annual Lecture on Tuesday evening, Nick Clegg spoke of the protection of civil liberties as being one of the core elements of the modern British Constitution.

He outlined in very clear terms that he believes people should not have to put up with unnecessary spying or interference and continued, “no law abiding citizen must ever fear arbitrary intrusion or harassment from the state”. He specifically mentioned ID cards, unregulated CCTV, fingerprinting of children without parent’s consent and the indefinite retention of DNA as “illegitimate intrusions”. He also drew attention to the current reviewing of counter-terrorism legislation.

It is reassuring to hear that the Deputy Prime Minster still has these issues in his top priorities, and this hopefully suggests that the forthcoming Freedom Bill will deliver real changes.

Click here to read the full speech.

By Amy Wevill

If you would be interesting in writing a guest post, please e-mail [email protected].

My speech to the Libertarian Alliance: Anonymity is not a Crime

I gave this speech this weekend and thought that readers might be interested. It's a bit long and I look like the left side of my face is slowly being cooked by the lighting, but it's not a bad speech I think.

Topics covered:

* Intercept Modernisation Programme

* Stop and Search

* ID Cards

* Control Orders

* NICE databases

Topic I would have covered if I had time, and will be addressing again very soon indeed: European Arrest Warrant

By Alex Deane

Book launch this evening: ‘Fight Terror, Defend Freedom’ by Dominic Raab MP

This evening will see the launch of civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch’s new publication, ‘Fight Terror, Defend Freedom’ by Dominic Raab MP.
 
The launch of the book will take place between 5:00pm and 6:00pm today in the Thatcher Room in Portcullis House, Houses of Parliament.  
 
Mr Raab, who was an international lawyer prior to his election to Parliament, will introduce his publication, followed by a panel discussion including former Shadow Home Secretary David Davis MP, Centre for Technology Policy Research Jerry Fishenden and Big Brother Watch Director Alex Deane.   
 
Commenting on the launch of the publication Raab said:

“Today’s publication of the National Security Strategy, highlights the flaws in the last government’s approach to counter-terrorism. Too much time, money and effort was wasted on ‘sound byte’ security. Too many of Labour’s measures, like ID cards and prolonged detention without charge, were unnecessary or irrelevant to our security. 

 “The government has a golden opportunity to break with this flawed approach. We should be defending our freedoms, like free speech and the presumption of innocence. At the same time, the justice system is an underused weapon in the fight against terrorism. We should be strengthening our capacity to prosecute terrorists – not least by lifting the ban on using intercept as evidence.” 

Alex Deane, Director of Big Brother Watch said: 

“The case for action is now irresistible.  Dominic Raab’s publication shows the injustices being done every day in this country.  Stop and search and control orders are being reviewed – why?  Why review something when you know it’s wrong?“ 

Click here to download a copy of the booklet.

Guest post: My ill-fated evening in Southampton - Britain’s big brother capital

Recently I had the misfortune of being invited for a night out in Southampton.

This visit was a real eye-opener to me and taught me how much the ‘Big Brother’ society is starting to negatively impact on our day to day lives. I also had a lesson in how little power we have to challenge the people who are doing this.

Let’s start with the basics: it is not possible to have a night out in Southampton without carrying some form of identification.

The types that the bars and clubs accept are: a 'Prove it' card (which at 30 I am too old to have), a driving licence (I don’t drive) or a passport (which in line with Home Office guidelines I use for immigration purposes only!). Without one of these documents, snarling bouncers will refuse you entry to almost every club or bar, even if you the last time you got IDed John Major was still Prime Minister!

A review of the current playing field for civil liberties

I have written an extended piece for the website Critical Reaction reviewing the various outstanding civil liberties issues under the Coalition. Part 1 is here - Part 2 is here.

By Alex Deane

Leave. It. Alone.

You can say many things about the civil liberties record of the previous government, but one thing is irrefutable: they rarely know when to stop chasing a lost cause.

From 42 days to control orders, they were a model of illjudged and overbearing persistence. And so to today, during the report stage debate of the Identity Documents Bill - which is set to scrap the hated ID card once and for all - Big Brother Watch favourite Meg Hillier was moaning:

"When something is bought in good faith there needs to be some recompense for the individual. We recognise, reluctantly, that both parties in this Government have a mandate to get rid of ID cards... but this issue is very important."

And promptly introduced a motion to force the Government to pay back £30 to the misguided individuals who signed-up to a lifetime of living on a database.

Up stepped Damian Green, Big Brother Watch actual favourite, who said:

"I just do not believe there is a single person in this country struggling for money who would have decided an ID card was the best way to spend £30.

"Taxpayers have already paid out £292 million with fewer than 15,000 cards issued, at a cost of more than £20,000 per card.

"This is by any standards a scandalous waste of money which lies squarely at the door of ministers in the previous government."

And Hillier's amendment was defeated, 302 votes to 189.

Common sense reigns and hopefully that will be the last we have to hear of it.

By Dylan Sharpe

Hillier grooms transsexuals in bid to save her precious ID card scheme

As the post-election dust settles, ID card guru and Big Brother Watch pin-up Meg Hillier MP has emerged with the latest in a series of bonkers proposals to save the NIR.

The Register reports how the pink card toting maniac has refused to accept the abolition of her intrusive lovechild and now has her all-seeing-eye trained on the transgender community; a group who, in her view, simply must benefit from this jumped up driving licence.

On Tuesday she proposed an amendment to the Identity Documents Bill, which is intended to assert the Coalition’s new position on matters like identity cards. She offered,

"Any ID card issued to a transgendered person, which is valid immediately before the day on which this Act is passed, shall continue to be valid until the Secretary of State has laid before both Houses of Parliament a report to the effect that the Secretary of State is satisfied that an identity document in the assigned gender is available for issue to a transgendered person."

Hillier has been a broken record for some time now, but public humiliation only seems to spur her on. From web chat trouncings, to cures for social exclusion she is the political equivalent of a garden moth.

Her flawed proposal was whipped up from the depths of her dreams and represents further nonsense from a stubborn individual who has seen her ambitions crushed in recent months. For her own well-being she should come to terms with the fact that the ID card scheme was an expensive, authoritarian fancy, nobody wanted or needed.

By James Stannard

The privacy piggies keep on squealing

Regular readers will remember that when it was announced that ID cards were for the chop, I couldn't resist delighting in the news that those who had paid for an ID card weren't going to be recompensed. If you play with matches etc...

Soon after, David 'Big' Blunkett moaned that it was all terribly unfair and threatened to sue the new Government. His empty threat was pushed one-step further by deluded Mancunian hack Angela Epstein, who proudly announced she was filing her form to the small claims court.

Now this trickle of ID card apologists trying to defend their pathetic little scheme has turned into a torrent - and it's time it stopped.

Julie Hilling, the Labour MP for Atherton, has been bleating that her constituents feel terribly hard done by.

Roberta Blackman-Woods, Labour MP for Durham, has used a different method and complained about the damage that will be done to all of 60-odd jobs in her area.

Even the notorious bad-boy of the Commons, Dennis MacShane, has thrown his hat into the ring with an op ed entitled 'I love my ID card.' 

I am genuinely perplexed. As was revealed last week, in the end just 13,200 people actually paid for an ID card in the five months they were on offer - a pathetic number of people for this sort of reaction. In addition, both the Lib Dems and Conservatives (who between them polled 17.5 million votes compared to Labour's 8.6) ran on a policy of scrapping the ID card.

The war is over - the ID card sympathisers lost. It's time they realised it.

By Dylan Sharpe

ID cards by the backdoor?

The following article is a guest post written by Ian Dunt - the Editor of leading specialist UK politics news website, Politics.co.uk. Having read this article when it went up on his site on Sunday; we thought it was important that Big Brother Watch readers also had the chance to digest the details, and it is reproduced here with Ian's kind permission.

The devil, as they say, is in the details. When the coalition government said it would cancel ID cards most media outlets didn't pay much attention to the fact the cards would remain for foreign nationals. According to most of the British press, foreign nationals are, at best, an after thought.

No one wants to touch this one. When I contacted the Home Office, they insisted they can't get rid of the cards because of a piece of European legislation requiring biometric residency permits for third-party nationals residing in the EU. On June 13th, Britain signed up to Council Regulation (EC) No 1030/2002. In 2008 the law went a step further, with Council Regulation (EC) No 380/2008 banning the use of vignettes - little stickers you can put in a passport - as a means of satisfying the permit requirement. Now the permits had to be standalone card in 'ID-1' or 'ID-2' format. Britain went for ID-1 in line with its plans for ID cards.

The truth is, the government was only ever following EU law when it made foreign nationals part of the first phase of ID cards' roll-out. It merely seized on the requirements to fit its populist, xenophobic rhetoric, in a sad attempt to wring as much political capital as it could out of what was already an unethical EU regulation.

Remember that Crewe and Nantwich by-election in 2008? Back then, the controversy was all about how Labour tried to paint the Tory candidate as posh. But those same Labour leaflets had something else interesting in them. "Do you oppose making foreign nationals carry an ID card?" they read, in a mock-up Tory MP application form. In actual fact, the Conservatives opposed ID cards for everyone. This was desperate, ugly prejudice, the vain attempt to press that racist button in the British electorate. The media thought prejudice against rich people was more important, as is fairly typical. Labour seized the opportunities offered it by the EU law and ran with it in the most irresponsible way possible.

David Blunkett threatens to sue over the ID card cancellation

Former Home Secretary, forefather of the identity card scheme (then called 'entitlement cards') and general bad egg, David 'Big' Blunkett has rained on my parade.

Having made no secret of enjoying the announcement that the government is refusing to refund the 15,000 dupes that spent £30 on an ID card; in a radio interview this morning, Blunkett has sullied the tone by threatening to sue for recompense:

As reported by the Independent:

Mr Blunkett, who first announced plans for ID cards in 2003, dismissed suggestions that they formed part of a "surveillance state".

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I have got a card and it's very useful and I don't believe anyone has surveilled anything about me.

"Unfortunately, nobody is getting their money back. I'm thinking of suing them, but it might cost me more than £30."

David Blunkett and his former Government are already costing the taxpayer millions getting out of the long, expensive contracts for an intrusive scheme that nobody wanted.

Now he’s threatening to drain more funds in a legal challenge with no reasonable foundation.

It's all sadly reminiscent of the previous government.

By Dylan Sharpe

A formal end to ID Cards

A good day. The ID card scheme’s demise is one in the eye for the authoritarian busybodies. Nobody wanted them and they were an intrusive waste of money.

Now, along with our friends at No2ID and the like, we must ensure that the bureaucrats don’t continue with the construction of a database state bit by bit – because ID cards were just the most visible part of a whole scheme of nosiness, much of which is still with us.

By Alex Deane

Schadenfreude

When - on the day the coalition government was formed - the Identity and Passport Service website changed to look like this many were cheered.

When - a few days later - the coalition document proudly announced the scrapping of the ID card and National Identity Register many more had reason to be pleased.

But, and I expect some backlash for my insensitivity, it is this announcement that has actually made me smile the widest (taken from the Times):

Thousands of people who bought identity cards will not receive refunds under a Bill to be unveiled tomorrow scrapping the eight-year project.

The Government has decided it will be too costly to administer a scheme to pay back the £30 to each of the 13,000 people who bought a card.

Don't say we - and, of course, our dear friends at No2ID - didn't warn you. "Nothing to hide, nothing to fear?" Well it seems that the 13,000 ID card sorry, worthless piece of plastic-carriers now £30 out of pocket have learned there is something to fear: being blindly led down an alley by an overbearing, overmighty, and profligate government. 

By Dylan Sharpe

Addendum

...Regular readers will know that if there are two people we are particularly glad to see bitten by this news it's nutty former Home Office Minister automaton, Meg Hillier; and the always delightful ID card dope and Manchester Evening News reporter, Angela Epstein.

We hope that both are mournfully looking at their ID cards and wondering what might have been...

A brief comic interlude

With the Identity and Passport Service website now solemnly announcing the end of the UK ID card and Nick Clegg this morning reaffirming the coalition's ambition to scrap the National Identity Register; it seems that we in Britain are now free of the spectre of the identity card.

So let us spare a thought for those in other countries who are not so fortunate. Take Ghana, for instance, whose ID card scheme is now up and running, and whose moves to promote the venture are considerably more ambitious than the pathetic efforts of our previous government.

With many thanks and a huge hat-tip to Total Politics, I am proud to present the Ghanaian ID card commercial:

By Dylan Sharpe

Proof, if proof were needed, that ID cards are a waste of time

ID cards are on sale for £2. Pretty convincing ones, too.

Not only does this demonstrate the uselessness of the scheme - the false certainty such cards cause people to have constitutes a new danger in the world of ID.

By Alex Deane

Alasdair Palmer is wrong, wrong, wrong

In the Sunday Telegraph yesterday, I was saddened to see that Public Policy Editor, Alasdair Palmer, had written a particularly wretched article decrying the scrapping of ID cards and innocent DNA retention.

The article - with its delightfully understated title 'Why the coalition is set to bring us a rise in crime' - has numerous flaws which require urgent correction:

Most of us think that a top priority of any effective government should be to have clear and coherent policies on cutting crime. So it’s surprising to discover that the deal between the Tories and the Lib Dems says nothing about it.

The closest it gets is a statement that “the parties agree to implement a full programme of measures to reverse the substantial erosion of civil liberties under the Labour government and roll back state intrusion” – which means, among other things, abolishing ID cards and “adopting the protections of the Scottish model for the DNA database”.

But getting rid of ID cards and making it harder for the police to retain DNA records is not going to reduce crime: if anything, it will increase it, by making crime harder to detect and criminals more difficult to apprehend.

Urgh! Before reminding Mr Palmer of the piddling issues of personal privacy and habeas corpus, let's consider the statistics, shall we?

As was revealed earlier this year, just 0.3% of solved crimes in Britain are due to the DNA database. The research shows that - despite the massive expansion in the Government database - only 3,666 crimes are detected every year with links to an existing DNA profile. The Scottish model, which Alasdair seems so opposed to, simply reduces the length of time innocent DNA profiles (around a third of the current database) can be retained from 6 to 3 years. 

I would love to ask Mr Palmer how he thinks ID cards would facilitate crime prevention? Is his ideal world one in which every UK citizen carries identification that the Police can order to see at any time; to paraphrase our new PM's infamous gaffe - "ver are your papers?"  Not even our overbearing previous government were ready to go that far! 

But the greater point is that, given the very minor crime fighting benefit - and we are yet to be convinced by any case in which a previously innocent person's DNA profile has helped solve a crime - is Alasdair Palmer really prepared to spend billions on an ID card scheme and enormous state DNA database that puts our identity and biometric data in the hands of countless thousands of government bureaucrats?

Government rates of data loss, abuse of data, and the very simple fact that liberty is ours to keep, not the state's to take, should be enough. But Mr Palmer seems ready to sacrifice all of this simply to appear tough on crime. Shameful.

By Dylan Sharpe

A welcome site...

...and one Government department definitely needs a name-change (click to enlarge).

As our friends at Privacy International have noted, it will be very interesting to see the 'how'.

By Dylan Sharpe

Want a passport? Join the National Identity Register

Public sector ICT monitors Kable have revealed that the Home Secretary, Alan Johnson, plans to introduce primary legislation which would require passport applicants to be fingerprinted and enrolled on the National Identity Register.

As they write:

In response to a question from his Conservative shadow Chris Grayling, Johnson said:

"The provisions of the Identity Cards Act 2006 will be amended by further primary legislation, so that everyone aged 16 and over who applies for a British passport will have the choice of being issued with an identity card or a passport (or both documents) and for their identity details, including facial image and fingerprint biometrics, to be recorded on the same National Identity Register."

As Kable notes, even if Labour wins the next election, Johnson might struggle using primary legislation to force this through Parliament in the face of the opposition to identity cards from the Lib Dems and Conservatives.

Nevertheless, I have been moved on several occasions in recent weeks to remind people that whatever the Government might have said the past, the ID card scheme and National Identity Register remain very much alive.

This latest revelation adds further proof that the Big Brother ambitions of our current executive show no signs of going away. 

By Dylan Sharpe

New IPS ID card blog - a grammar and truth vacuum

Following on from my blogpost on Friday - collating all the various ways in which the government continues to push ID cards at us - it has emerged that the Home Office has put together a blog titled 'Understanding the identity card'.

Some may remember the unintentionally hilarious 'I am Spartacus' video from the Identity & Passport Service that we featured on the site earlier this year; well it seems that despite being a dog's dinner in marketing terms, the IPS has decided to run with their friendly fingerprint idea and produce four more bizarre and deeply misleading videos explaining the project.

The first of the four is handily titled 'Your details will be safe with us'. As you will see if you click the screenshot on the right, they proudly announce that details will be "completely safe". Later in the video the IPS goes so far as to say they have an "excellent track record".

Yet, in 2008 the government lost over 29 million personal records. Amongst the data lost were the details for 25 million child benefit claimants; the Ministry of Justice lost information affecting more than 45,000 people, in some cases revealing their criminal records and credit histories; and the Home Office lost the personal details of 3,000 seasonal agricultural workers – including their passport numbers – when two CDs went missing in the post.

Skipping the maddening 'It’s like having a passport in your pocket' - no, having a passport is like having a passport in your pocket - and 'They help protect your identity' - again, a passport is far better at this. As Toby Stevens, of the Enterprise Privacy Group, argued last year, "in the early days, private companies won't be aware of what an ID card is supposed to look like, nor will they have the equipment to check the cards electronically, so 'flash and dash' is inevitable."

We then come to 'It won't become your life history'. This infomercial begins by saying "identity cards are not designed to track your every move". But then later says "An entry will go on your record when your card is checked – with your permission – against the National Identity Register. This will happen when you do something big, like apply for a mortgage." Begging the question - how is this not tracking?

All in all, the videos are a disgrace. Yet, it is the 'blog' (which you might think bears a passing resemblance to another blog you are presently reading) with Home Office moderated comments, and this three sentence grammar-free buzz-phrase: The new identity card. Fits in your pocket. Does loads - that really irks me. 

The new identity card. Most people don't want it. The government has said they're not compulsory. But the Home Office keep spending time and money promoting them.

By Dylan Sharpe

Hat-tip: our friends at NO2ID

Don't be fooled. The ID card has not gone away

Holding an identity card should be a personal choice for British citizens — just as it is now to obtain a passport. Accordingly, I want the introduction of identity cards for all British citizens to be voluntary

Alan Johnson, Home Secretary - 1st July 2009

We will reduce the information British citizens have to give for the new biometric passport to no more than that required for today's passport. And so conference, I can say to you today, in the next parliament there will be no compulsory ID cards for British citizens

Gordon Brown, Prime Minister - 29th September 2009

Following Alex's very well-received blogpost summing up our opposition to body scanners - and a number of new stories from this week - I thought it would be useful to provide a list of the numerous ways in which a government supposedly committed to 'personal choice' on identity has pushed, cajoled and coerced the nation into applying for an ID card.

If you are over 60 and want a bus pass - Pensioners could be forced to carry identity cards to qualify for free bus travel

If you are poor and bank at RBS and Lloyds - Meg Hillier said companies might offer to buy the £30 cards for people who wouldn’t pay for them otherwise

Or if you are just poor - Home Office minister Meg Hillier argues ID cards can provide the foundation for fairer access to services and opportunities

If you work at an airport - All staff who work 'airside' are eligible to get a free card as part of the regional roll-out of the ID cards scheme

If you are aged 18-24 and live in London (and want to buy alcohol) - Meg Hillier said People aged 18 to 24 will be able to spend £30 on a biometric photocard that can be used to prove their age when buying alcohol or age-restricted goods or to gain entry to a nightclub

If you are a Premiership footballer or 'skilled migrant' - The Home Office said that from January 6 skilled migrants would have to apply for identity cards when their visas expired. This further roll-out of the plans was brought forward from April

If you are a civil servant - Phil Woolas, the Immigration minister, faced ridicule last night after announcing that his own civil servants would be the first Britons to be issued with identity cards

When applying for a CRB check - Millions could be asked to provide ID card and fingerprint data to get a job under new systems being developed by the Home Office following a collapse in the accuracy of background checks

And finally...to prevent identity fraud and terrorism - Alan Johnson: We need identity cards, and soon

And the areas this 'non-compulsory' scheme has been 'rolled out'...

Newcastle, Middlesbrough, Berwick and Northumberland - Identity cards could be introduced across the North-East by the end of the year, it has been revealed

Birmingham and Warwick - Identity cards are to be issued in Birmingham, the Home Office has announced

Lancashire - Identity cards are to be rolled out across Lancashire in the New Year

Cheshire - ID card scheme rolled out in Cheshire

London - London is about to see the roll-out of the latest stage of the government's identity card scheme

Manchester - Residents of Greater Manchester will be the first British citizens able to apply for a voluntary ID card

And...our friendly, neighbourhood Post Office - Post Office co-opted to hasten ID card rollout

This list is probably not comprehensive, BUT don't let anyone - Minister, politician, Joe Public - ever tell you the ID card scheme has gone away. The Government is trying every trick in the political playbook to press identity cards into the hands of a deeply skeptical general public.

We must not let them. Go to www.no2id.net to read more.

By Dylan Sharpe

Mystic Meg's miracle cure

Identity card junkie Meg Hillier MP has once again been caught pushing the abhorrent pink plastic.

This time she has written a piece for Progress (the New Labour think tank) where she suggests ID cards could be the miracle cure for social exclusion.

The bulk of her argument focuses on the flimsy claim that:

Currently 80 per cent of the population have passports. That means 20 per cent are without access to the highest standard of identity verification.

Firstly, the majority of that 20% are not without access to the highest standard of identity verification, they simply do not have a passport. Secondly, we at Big Brother Watch do not think that the offer of a £30 ID card that has so far cost the taxpayer around £4.5 billion, and levies punitive fines at people who don't keep their details up-to-date, is the silver bullet to social exclusion.

It should be noted that many individuals may not want or need a passport. Hillier may enjoy playing the social exclusion card to her home crowd, but most will see it as another shallow smokescreen in the Government's quest for total surveillance of the general public.

On several occasions Meg suggests the importance of building an identity footprint. She presumably has a size 13 and leaves a trail of bank statements wherever she treads.

But, as always, Meg is on hand to provide us with some unintentional hilarity, writing:

My vision is of an identity service where government's role is limited to ensuring safety and security in providing the infrastructure...the technological possibilities are exciting.

On the same day that Kable reported:

Alan Johnson said in the last year five people had been disciplined or dismissed for falsifying records or manipulating Home Office systems…. Six people have been disciplined for unauthorised access to a database or letting someone else use their log-in.

Hmmm, safety and security. For all you technological thrill seekers, you must agree that is quite exhilarating. 

By James Stannard

How much more control can we stomach?

We're not the biggest fans of Meg Hillier MP here at Big Brother Watch Towers. The most compliant of the spineless drones that float around the Home Office, she staggers from embarrassing mistake to unintentionally hilarious error; but this latest idea really takes the biscuit. 

Yesterday, the parliamentary under-secretary of state at the Home Office, in a break between her relentless promotion of the National Identity Register in the North of England, floated the creation of an online ID card.

As The Northern Echo reports:

A Government minister has said identity cards for young people could be one way of keeping children safe on the internet.

Ms Hillier, who is also responsible for the national identity card scheme, said in Belgium, youngsters had identity cards.

She added: “Children have to prove they are children before they go on social networking sites.

“This isn’t Home Office policy, but there are various technical mechanisms. 

Not content with pushing the identity card scheme at a deeply sceptical population, Hillier is now trying to move people-tracking and ID surveillance online. 

The danger posed by paedophiles impersonating children on the internet is real - but it is one that can be countered with tough parenting rules for youngsters online rather than a catch-all policy that harms law-abiding people and leads to more surveillance and more government control. Children know not to get into cars with strangers because they have been taught to understand the risks - it is time parents treated chatting to strangers online with the same warnings.

But why let parents do the work when the government can interfere, eh?

By Dylan Sharpe

Think the ID card's gone away? Think again

Dominique Lazanski is an experienced digital consultant and a regular writer and commentator on Internet policy and regulation from a free market perspective. She has over 10 years of experience in Silicon Valley with spells at Yahoo! and Apple and has spent the last several years in London as a consultant to the music industry and media agencies.

I have been a resident of the UK since 2005, having emigrated here from the USA – my home country.  At first I was a graduate student, then -according to the Home Office - a highly-skilled migrant worker.  Recently I married a UK citizen and I had to renew my visa for the fourth time in 4 years.  This time, the situation is different.  No longer do I have a ‘vignette’ sticker in my passport. Instead, I have been compelled to have a UK ID card which holds my biometrics and visa.  I have to carry both my passport and my ID when I travel in and out of the country.

This compulsion is due to changes to the UK Borders Act of 2007 ‘updating’ the original act.  In 2009 a provision was added allowing the Secretary of State to demand an immigrant’s biometrics.  From the convoluted and obtuse language contained in the updated text, it appears that if the Secretary of State requests a record of biometrics from an immigrant, say me, when I am at a random location, say an airport, then I need to give it to him.  How do I give him a record of my biometrics? – by handing over my ID card.

The law states (though not clearly) that:

(6) Regulations under subsection (1)(b) may, in particular, require the production or other use of a biometric immigration document that is combined with another document; and section 16 of the Identity Cards Act 2006 (c. 15) (prohibition of requirement to produce ID card) is subject to this subsection.

Roughly translated: the Government seems to think that this means it's now OK to force ID cards on immigrants. This is troubling on so many levels, but there are two points in particular here.  First, since the ID card is required for all non-EU immigrants, then it is a very small step to mandate them for all citizens and residents of the UK.  Secondly, and more importantly, the revision of the UK Borders Act of 2007 provides for the Secretary of State to have more power to mandate laws directly, thereby bypassing the need for legislation to be passed by Parliament.  We have already seen such power introduced in the Digital Economy Bill, but we are now experiencing that power through this backhanded introduction of compulsory ID Cards.  These ever-increasing powers of the Secretary of State are far more dangerous and more widespread than we could ever have imagined.  Perhaps the Secretary of State will be our real ‘big brother’!

Related link: previous post from this guest author

What not to do when you retire...

Last week we brought you the news that in advance of his first annual report, Sir Joseph Pilling - the UK Identity Commissioner - had given an interview to our old friend on the Manchester Evening News, Angela Epstein. As you will see from my blogpost, I was somewhat unhappy with the easy ride Pilling was afforded.

So, massive credit is due to Nicole Kobie at ITPRO Magazine for the pearls she has gleaned from her interview with the Commissioner, some of which I include below for your entertainment:

Q: You admit yourself in the report that you didn't know that much about the subject when you were picked for the job. Why do you think they picked you?

A: Who wants to drop what they're doing to take on a role that is only going to last for a matter of months? They were forced to have somebody as the ID commissioner, because by law they couldn't issue a card until they had a commissioner.

They solved the problem by coming to somebody like me, who wasn't actually looking for a job and didn't mind if the job actually continued or not. I'm so old and so past it that I didn't apply for the job and wouldn't have been willing to do it on a full-time basis, because I've got other things that I am committed to. 

I think one of the great joys of retirement is you have time to spend poking around in things you didn't have time for when you were working.

An old man who has chosen to spend his retirement presiding over the most intrusive and expensive system allowing our government to control its population ever conceived in Britain.

Do have a read of the full interview and realise just how much peril we are in!

By Dylan Sharpe

The steady creep of the Identity Card

As I forewarned yesterday, The Office of The Identity Commissioner has presented his First Annual Report to Parliament to very mercifully little fanfare.

The document, which can be viewed on his website, is a mostly unremarkable piece of work with very little insight into the government's plans for the Identity Register.

Despite this, it does reveal that in the past three months around 5,000 people have been issued with identity cards and the Commissioner's office has spent £565,000.
 
That's over a hundred quid a card. At this rate if the government fulfills its aim of getting the whole population onto the National Identity Register, Britain will go bankrupt before Portsmouth FC.

And that's without mentioning the fact that both the Conservatives and Lib Dems have pledged to scrap the entire project.

In other woeful privacy news, this morning Blackburn Council held a launch event for the roll-out of the ID card scheme in their town; with Councillor Suleman Khonat weakly toeing the party line and being the first in the birthplace of John Morley to sign-up to a lifetime of noxious intrusion.

Money is being frittered away on a scheme that is supposed to be voluntary, yet has more publicity churned out about it than most other government campaigns.

Expensive, intrusive and unnecessary...remind you of anything?

By Dylan Sharpe

The ID card 'tsar' gets royalty treatment from the pro-ID hack

Angela Epstein is not one of Big Brother Watch's favourite people. For those unaware, she is a reporter on the Manchester Evening News and wrote one of the most crass and ill-informed articles on the ID card project last year for her newspaper (which, incredibly, included the line: ‘I personally can’t see what there is to lose if you’re a law abiding citizen with nothing to hide’).

Her latest transgression is to be honoured with an interview with the so-called ID card 'tsar' Sir Joseph Pilling - also known as the Orwellian 'National Identity Commissioner' - and give him a ride so easy, that she completely ignores the following comment:

“I am personally neutral - and I do understand why those who haven`t followed every aspect of the debate may find it difficult to see why we are having them, particularly since they are voluntary.”

Well, Sir Jo, I have followed every aspect of this debate and I not only find it difficult to see why ID cards are still around, I find them incredibly intrusive, morally reprehensible and hugely over-expensive.

What is more they may currently be voluntary but, as even Ms Epstein's article makes clear:

From 2011, British citizens aged 16 or over who apply for a passport will automatically be registered on the national identity database, which contains personal details including fingerprints and facial scans.

So, despite explicitly stating that the scheme isn't voluntary (and ignoring the condescension), Epstein ends by letting Pilling restate the fact he is neutral, before tickling his chin and calling him a proud northerner.

The National Identity Commissioner's 3 month interim report on ID cards is presented to Parliament today. We await the results with interest.

By Dylan Sharpe

Our surveillance state - intrusive and ineffective

Two stories have caught my eye this morning that provide a perfect summation of the current progress of Britain's surveillance state.

The first comes from the Daily Telegraph via Manchester:

Man can't prove ID with ID card

Darren McTeggart tried to use the £30 ID card to pick up a replacement credit card from a branch of Santander in Manchester, where the scheme was rolled out on a voluntary basis last year.

Mr McTeggart, one of the first people to get the card, said: “They said it was not on their list of approved ID.

“I sent an email to the head office, but they wouldn’t budge. The government has been pushing this card on TV and elsewhere so it beggars belief why the bank won’t accept it.”

The second comes courtesy of the Gloucester Citizen:

Broken CCTV missed vandal attack

Businessman Barry Clayton was left fuming when his shop window was smashed and he discovered a CCTV camera opposite was not working.

He said: “On Saturday night, one of our shop windows was kicked in. We had hoped that it might have been caught on camera. There would have been a really good chance of getting some evidence off it.

“But we’ve looked at the camera – which was just a few yards away high up on a wall – today and yesterday and it’s facing the wall that it’s mounted on. Its main field of vision will just be the cream-coloured wall that it’s on.”

So there we have it. Mr McTeggart presumably foolishly jumped at the chance to get an ID card because the government had told him that it was a much simpler and easier form of identification; while Mr Clayton had always assumed that the council CCTV camera opposite his shop would deter criminals but catch any who chanced an attack on his shop.

Intrusive and ineffective - Big Brother Watch's surveillance State of the Union.

By Dylan Sharpe

Home Office try to lure London's students onto ID card database

The 'voluntary' sign-up to the ID card scheme came to the capital today when the Home Office announced that young Londoners could now apply for a National ID card.

As reported in the Evening Standard:

People aged 18 to 24 will be able to spend £30 on a biometric photocard that can be used to prove their age when buying alcohol or age-restricted goods, to gain entry to a nightclub, or even to travel in Europe.

Home Office minister Meg Hillier said that the National Identity Card would be an “extremely useful tool”.

Adding that, “with tough new laws clamping down on underage drinking, it will be more important than ever for young people to have access to a universally accepted proof of age.”

There is a certain irony that while the Home office desperately tries to tackle binge drinking in one campaign, it presents being able to prove one’s age when buying alcohol as a benefit for getting an ID card in another. Clearly whatever works to dupe the young into signing away their personal data is just dandy.

However, what this latest sales pitch neglects to mention is that by signing up, these young Londoners face having their personal details held on insecure government databases for the rest of their lives.

Moreover, in addition to the initial £30, under this intrusive scheme every registered individual will be obliged to notify any changes in their personal information – and failure to do so may incur a fine.

As our friends at No2ID point out, cash-strapped students shouldn't even be thinking about spending £30 on an ID card when a) the Tories and the Lib Dems want rid of them and b) there are plenty of age verification cards available that cost under £10. 

This is just the latest in a series of poorly aimed, poorly thought-out government propaganda pitches for the ID card to encourage (or perhaps lay the ground-work) for full-scale introduction.

By Edward Hockings

Meet the friendly new fingerprint hawking the ID card

Firstly, a massive hat-tip to The Register for alerting us to this story, and particular thanks to John Lettice for providing me with the gruesome evidence.

If you're wondering who the strange looking fella' to the right is; he is the new face of/logo for the Identity and Passport Service's latest ID card marketing campaign.

The fact that he appears to be a fingerprint leaves Big Brother Watch in the strange position of not being sure whether to laugh or cry.

Relief, however, is at hand in the form of the video that accompanies our friendly little fingerprint's heavy-sell - click here to view.

By using a rip-off of Kubrick's Spartacus, the IPS has made the unfortunate, albeit hilarious, error of associating the use of ID cards with a film about a rebellious slave seeking to bring down an overbearing and wayward empire.

In the film, once identified, our eponymous hero is put to death by the aforementioned empire. So no downsides to that reference either.

Wonderful. Just, wonderful.

By Dylan Sharpe  

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