The UK government has revised its plans for a national compulsory biometric identity card. The original proposal was for a new 'clean' central database to hold all personal information - name, date of birth, NI number, address, biometric data (iris scans, fingerprints, DNA) as well as your immigration status, medical and criminal records. And everything else too.

Having realised that it was going to be very expensive, they've decided instead to cobble together three existing databases - which is a bit funny because they are all old and wildly inaccurate. For example, the Department for Work & Pensions database of national insurance numbers contains 20 million more numbers than living citizens.

One interesting point is the idea that any non-European citizen coming to the UK for more more than 6 months for any reason will have to submit iris scans and fingerprints to the database to gain a visa for travel here. Data would be collected at 150 identity centres around the world. So the UK government (and the secret police) would gradually collect valuable (in terms of intelligence and in monetary value) on a vast number of non-UK citizens.

Proposals are also afoot for the compulsory cards to be compatible with existing payment chip-and-PIN systems for easy integration. So all your payment transactions can be monitored.

Its a little surprising that the british state doesn't just come out and admit that they want to know:

- every payment you make or receive
- the time, duration and destination of any journey by public transport
- the time, duration and destination of all journeys by car through ANPR (automatic number plate recognition - in action now)
- your entire work/non-work and tax history
- where you live, and where you have ever lived
- your immigration status
- where you go on your holidays
- your entire medical history
- your entire criminal / political history
- your exact physical location anywhere in the country / world / universe at any time of day or night
- how long you spent on the toilet this morning
- oh, and everything else

A bit like "ID CARDS macht frei"

The only people who seem really convinced that all this is a good idea which helps people are the same people who are going to make billions foisting this on everyone, and the pigs and the state. As none of these people are my friends it seems to me this ID card caper is 'not a good thing'.

Caution: wearing tin foil on your head makes you believe David Shayler

More on this topic at  http://www.wombles.org.uk/topics/id