What is often missed in all these debates is that the card is largely an irrelevance. The Government has called its legislation the Identity Cards Bill; it should be the Identity Register Bill. People who welcome the idea on the principle that "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" might not be quite so sanguine if the arguments were framed in the context of the database, rather than the card. For too long, this has been a debate about carrying a card, which most people feel comfortable with because they already have plenty of them. But the key to this system is the information held on the national identity register.
This is not an exercise in giving people the chance to protect their identity, but in gathering information about the population and keeping it on a database for use by state agencies. Ministers dismiss this concern, saying that banks, insurance companies and supermarkets already keep vast amounts of personal detail about us all with few obvious controls. The fundamental difference is that it is voluntary to have a supermarket loyalty card or a bank account; and they do not all link up, even if some do. The identity database, however, will be a true behemoth of personal information.
Telegraph | Opinion | Home Front:On Del.icio.us: identity, ID_cards, UK, biometrics, database, danger
No comments:
Post a Comment