"Banish those mislaid ex-offender blues with ID Card." Not!

This morning I heard John Reid MP interviewed on BBC Breakfast. He claimed ID cards would help avoid the kind of dabacle we're seeing over released prisoners absconding before deportation. I thought that he was using the words "ID cards" more as a kind of totem to wish away the problems, because I couldn't see how they would help. It appears I was not the only person the think that he was talking up the solution. Have a look at the article referenced under the title of this post. In it the nub of the problem is concisely put.

The problem, essentially, is not that the data is broken - in these cases at least the data exists, is of relatively good quality, and is somewhere in the system. Clearly, it is the system itself that is broken, with its components utterly unable to organise the data they own, and therefore unable to exchange data meaningfully with other parts of the system. So, under these circumstances, what price your national identity register?

Just think what chaos with 60 million instead of a few hundred thousand identities to manage. Better still [that's ironic, just in case you didn't spot it], if it goes wrong, the legislation has us guilty until proven innocent; it is our responsibility to make sure our data is up to date and accurate, presumably even if they cock up.
Banish those mislaid ex-offender blues with ID Card! | The Register:
Filed in: ID_cards, UK, data-sharing