Former Home Secretary rejects ID cards
Posted on Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 by Home Office WatchCategory: ID Cards, Passports
From the BBC:
“Former Home Secretary David Blunkett says the government should scrap plans to introduce ID cards for all in favour of mandatory biometric passports.
Speaking at InfoSec 2009, a security conference held in London, the MP for Sheffield Brightside said biometric passports could do the job.
He said he had put the idea to the current Home Secretary Jacqui Smith.
He mooted the idea of ID cards when Home Secretary in 2001, but has changed his position in the last few months.
Asked whether ID cards could be dropped, Mr Blunkett told the BBC: “I think it is possible to mandate biometric passports.”
Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Huhne said:
“When even the father of ID cards spurns them, the idea is truly an abandoned orphan.
“Only the most profligate of governments would lavish billions on this programme in such a deep recession where hard choices are needed on public priorities.
“There is no face-saver with passports, which were becoming biometric in any case. It would be ridiculous to insist that people pay for new passports whether they need them or not.
“The Government should remember that the British state belongs to the British people and not the other way around.”
You can sign the Liberal Democrats’ petition against ID cards here.
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April 28th, 2009 at 10:06 pm
Unfortunately, this is a simple bluff, and it’s sad that Home Office Watch has fallen for it.
The National Identity Scheme is not, and never was, about the ID card. It was about the database behind it, which will store more information and track you more closely than any system in the Western world.
Blunkett’s proposed mandatory passport will just be the key to the database in the same way as the ID card. To stop this intrusion, we need to kill the cards, the database and the laws that enact the whole sorry scheme.
April 28th, 2009 at 10:47 pm
However, it matters very little anyway. The big brother state is driven by the database, not the cards themselves - the front end we have to present to agents of the state is almost immaterial. If I have to have a passport (when I haven’t left he country for twenty years) under such a scheme then there’s just as much of a chance that one day we will be forced to carry them.
But it’s the database behind them that’s the sinister bit.
April 29th, 2009 at 11:57 am
This story (regarding the Great Bandwagon-Jumper, as a friend of mine referred to him) has been widely reported as David Blunkett doing a big U-turn on identity cards.
Unfortunately, all Blunkett seems to be proposing is that a mandatory small plastic card, keyed to a large, intrusive biometric database, be replaced with a mandatory small cardboard booklet, keyed to a large, intrusive biometric database.
The card (whatever form it takes) is irrelevant - as others have pointed out, it’s the database that’s the really nasty bit.
April 29th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Will any database be secure from the CIA, whatever has replaced the KGB, and the wealthy states that underwrite much of the world’s violence? Will they not have access to the technology to produce fake documents, which within a few years will anyway probably be being produced by smart kids in their own bedrooms? None of this is about security - it is about control. Security will occur naturally in a benign state characterised by liberty, equity and justice. Perhaps it is time to attempt to realise this age-old English ideal, and to stop beating dissenters on our capital’s street in front of the world’s press.
April 29th, 2009 at 7:12 pm
I am an ex labour supporter I fell out with labour because of the lies which led up to the Iraq war and because of their relentless assault on our civil liberties. I urge people to think very carefully since they are obsessed with collecting data about us and this,biometric passports, is just another manifestation of that creed. Beware, this political leopard will not change its red spots, if re-elected they will bring ID cards and the rest of the intrusive data base State back with avengance.
April 29th, 2009 at 8:02 pm
I can’t help wonder if this was an option considered at the beginning.
Prepare the ground and introduce the database with passports (by lying about the need for them) and then, if ID Cards can’t be forced through abandon them whilst keeping the database.
We must not be distracted by this - the database is the problem, and what they want, the ID Cards are just the public face of it.
May 31st, 2009 at 4:01 pm
Blunketts comments are paving the way for the next step of the ID card scheme. The card has always been a diversion for the implementation of full biometric passport and biometric data base. Sadly, the political parties that claim to oppose the ID card scheme happily vote for the biometric passport component here and in the EU (look at the LibDems voting record in EU).
Those of us opposing this scheme in its entirety must now focus our attentions on the biometric passport. As long as this part of the ID card scheme survives, so does the ID card.