Government property: your identity

Here's another article with a nice way of expressing why we should be worried about ID cards.

You can well imagine the army of snoopers, informers and bureaucratic bullies that will grow up around ID cards.

And that's only the irritating end of the deal. The real whammy is this:

... look at the scale of fines proposed. The failure to register will be punished by a maximum fine of £2,500. The failure to apply in a manner prescribed (whatever that means) to renew your ID, or to inform the national identity register of a change of your details, or to surrender the ID card, or to notify the register of an invalid card, will all incur a maximum fine of £1,000. Hold these rules in your mind and ask yourself whether a government that was merely interested in your being able to identify yourself would enforce ID cards with these enormous fines. Of course it would not. The fines are a measure of the government's terrifying determination to make your identity its property. You only have to consider how easy it will be for a local official to remove your name from electoral roll because of ID card irregularities to understand the truly terrifying potential of the scheme. For one of the many facts that the government has chosen not to publicise about this scheme is that despite the huge costs, both direct and indirect, to the British citizen, the card remains government property and may be withdrawn by the home secretary. Without the card, a person will not be able to function as a citizen of this society.

I'm not finding anything of sufficient merit about the things to outweigh these costs to our liberty. I'm seriously considering emigration to get away from such a state.
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Filed in: ID_cards, UK, policy, civil_liberties