Inauspicious signs for ID cards

It seems that at least some of those charged with establishing the government's ID register are as aware of its flaws as the rest of us.

Yesterday, the Sunday Times published leaked emails between Office of Government Commerce mission critical director (identity and defence) David Foord and Identity and Passport Service acting commercial director Peter Smith that revealed plans to implement a scaled-down scheme in order to meet target dates. According to Foord:

This has all the inauspicious signs of a project continuing to be driven by an arbitrary end date rather than reality... I conclude that we are setting ourselves up to fail."

This month, the LSE Identity Project also released Reflections on the academic policy analysis process and the UK Identity Cards Scheme (pdf), which includes discussion on how academics were accused by then home secretary Charles Clarke of 'spinning' earlier this year when they challenged the facts behind the government's justifications for the scheme.

A stub with a story

An article in today's Guardian recounts how reams of private information about one person who discarded their boarding card stub in a bin on the Heathrow Express was easily uncovered (admittedly by an expert, but apparently without any difficulty).

It exposes the ability of companies and governments to claim that they need to collect more private data about us in the name of security, and the disregard they can show for how easily that information can be accessed by criminals.

This all bodes even less well for the UK government's invasive and bumbling ID card plans...

Image by Alex Koulintchenko via stock.xchng.

Renew for freedom

NO2ID are calling for everyone with a UK passport to renew it during the month of May to send a message in protest against compulsory inclusion of our personal data on the National Identity Register - expected to become a condition of getting a new passport in a year or two's time.

For more information click on the button below.

As seen on Doogiespace.