compulsory ID Cards

[Carol Anne]

A friend says he intends to be a 'refusnik' and will never accept or posess an ID card.
What is likely to happen to those refuse in the long term. Jail?

[jenstar]

Fined and forced to submit.

[coco pops]

yes jail and they will let murderers etc walk free to make room

[Octavius]

The Identity Cards Act 2006 bought about the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) which was established as an Executive Agency of the Home Office on 1st April 2006.

You will not have to carry an ID card, in fact the Act specifically prohibits making the carrying of an ID card compulsory.

[jenstar]

Yes, but the card is an irrelevance. The important bit is the biometric register, and that could be made compulsory. Though I think even the Labour government are slowing waking up to how unpopular that would be.

[Octavius]

The introduction of biometric passports is part of an international move to enhance passport security, so generally if you renew your passport you will have to go on the biometric register and will probably be given an ID card at the same time.

Fine if you don't want to travel outside of the UK at all, you won't need a passport.

Its only a matter of time before we have to register our iris patterns or fingerprints to get in and out of our places of employment or to claim benefits and make transactions in shops and banks anyway.

This is an international advancement, not just a UK one.

[Loosehead]

It may be international Octavius but it ain't an advancement. It means we have surrendered to Terrorism.. We do the damage to ourselves. Our leaders use the disproportianate fear generated by the media to introduce Orwellian control. Welcome to 1984, a couple of decades late perhaps but no less frightening.

[Octavius]

Ok, I meant advancement as it is being bought forward to/for us.

Surely though this is similar to DNA profiling? Nobody wants to go on a database, but if it meant that you were ruled out of an investigation into a crime that you had nothing to do with � wouldn�t you proffer some of your DNA to be given the all clear? Ditto, breath testing and blood tests.

So if in future, the only way of you accessing your money or paying for some milk and bread in Tesco�s was by confirming your identity by an iris scan � what would you do? Go back to the dark ages and make your own bread and commit an assault on someone else�s cow?

[Loosehead]

I Think I'd be forced to go along with it Octavius but I wouldn't like it. I'm not saying I would somehow boycott the new id methods, I just wouldn't like it. I just don't trust the government (of any hue) with this kind of power. The biometric data may well be intended for the sorts of uses you describe but how much resistance would a governement put up when the private sector starts to want to make use of the data and starts waving wads of cash in front of them?

The whole DNA thing is overstated as well, we have people saying that DNA is some sort of proof of crime, rubbish it just proves te person was there. I would not feel any safer convicting someone on DNA than I do on other methods.

[Octavius]

Well I wasn't talking of being convicted of a crime using DNA - I was referring to being cleared of it. If you weren't there then it most likely aint your DNA.

[Loosehead]

converely Octavius, just because they don't find your DNA it does not mean you were not there!