I have to say I am not sure what the problem with ID cards is. I realise that some do object but I can't for the life of me think why. I would be happy to see some of the objections outlined.
I carry an ID card every day which gives me access to the university, I carry a train pass which gives me the right to use public transport, I don't drive but if I did I would carry a driving licence. None of these items seem to impose much on me and protect me more than they harm me.

What have I missed ?

Peace

Tig, you're inverting the debate here. Sorry to sound all conservative here, but lets have a reason for ID cards.

- To Combat Illegal Immigration

WRONG. People who employ illegal migrants generally know they are doing so since they don't complain when they get sub-minimum wage pay etc.

- To Fight Terrorism

WRONG. What - are we hoping people put 'international terrorist' as their occupation? Spain has ID cards, look at the March 11th bombing. Saudi Arabia is a totalitarian state with far more surveilance infrastructure than ID cards and it still gets regular terrorist attacks.

- To combat Identity Fraud

WRONG. It simply means you escape questioning with one form of ID which is 'unfakeable' like the Titanic was 'unsinkable'. There are apparantly 80 million plus National Insurance numbers issued in the UK (population <60 million). Nuff said.


Now some reasons against:

- Mandatory carrying would make non-carrying an arrestable offence. This is obvious because the police couldn't verify your details without arresting you or you could just bluff. This would criminalise innocent people on a massive scale - just witness the use of 'anti-terror' laws to stop-and-search demonstrators etc... Ho often do you forget your keys, or wallet etc... Nuff said.

- It represents the infrastructure of a totalitarian state. Coupled with the failiure of the official reasons to withstand scrutiny and the draft Civil Contingencies Bill's (since amended) intention to suspend Parliament in case of 'political instability' i.e. declare dictatorship if people threaten the current sham oligarchy there are good reasons to believe ulterior motives are in play. Not that the government lies of course, that would be silly - I mean since we found the huge Iraqi 45minute WMD cache and liberated the population of fallujah from their foreheads theres no doubt the government is completely honest and accountable.

- The biometric feature makes it unlike any form of ID you mention, this is new, not 'no big deal'.

- Private contractors are likely to implement the scheme and theres no doubt the confidential database would be highly coveted by multinationals etc. It has been suggested (by Blunkett i believe) that the biometric ID card could be combined with credit cards - allowing every purchase you make to be logged and archived like the US' Total(itarian) Information Awareness scheme, since renamed Terrorist Information Awareness for obvious reasons.

The lack of legitimate explanation confirms the existence of ulterior motives, given the government's recent record there is absolutelyu every reason to oppose this scheme.

......is that the ID cards will hold biometric information such as iris scans. That information will also be held on a central IT system somewhere and it will be accessible by 'the authorities'. That means that if you attend a demonstration - eg a Stop the War march - the police can - and will - scan peoples irises and match the scans to the information held centrally. If the demonstration - or whatever - is not to 'the authorities' liking, they could quite easily identify those attending and make life difficult for them.
Let's say that at some point in the future the financial system collapses and a cashless central bank is implemented by the government. People attending a contentious event could be scanned and the next time they visit the shops to buy some food and try to pay with their government bank issued card, they could easily find that their account has no money in it - even though they'd been paid the day before !
You may think this is far-fetched, but as someone who works in IT, I KNOW it's possible NOW !

the world will be a shopping mall


and if you don't comply to what the authoritarians
impose as what society is, then you wil not be allowed access to
anything...
shelter, heatfood, water, air...

how modern...
how futuristic....

IT IS NOW!
they are rfid tagging the homeless in California...
Right now...

Those power mad elites are setting about this planet on a global coup for the worlds resources...
oil, water, gas...
Right NOW

we are living in a bad william gibson novel...


 http://www.wardrobe.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/murder_inc/part7.html
 http://www.wardrobe.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/murder_inc/society.html

I don't want an ID card - I know who I am!

What right does a govt. have to insist I carry an id card?

According to the beeb web-site corporations are being asked to for their opinion as to whether they think the cards should be sophisticated or not!! For sophisticated read contain chip technology that can be tracked etc...

Have I missed something here? perhaps we (the general public - not just 1000 stooges)should be asked? not the companies who are set to make a fortune producing them.

I will not carry one and will go to prison if I have to - if we all stick together and refuse then the scheme will be unworkable. Does anybody know if a campaign has been started?

a quick search turned up this site:

 http://www.defy-id.org.uk/index.htm

Who is Spartacus? We are Spartacus! Fuck the fuckers and their totalitarian leanings.

Well quite - the other interesting feature of the ID card is its chip, able to be read and sent to from mobile phone masts and GPS
In another survey, some 90% of adults thought microchipping of children was a good idea
One thing leads to another, don't you think

 http://tracers.8m.com/UAVsurveil.htm

and the mode for implanting you right now or in the past

 http://www.backfire.dk/EMPIRENORTH/newsite/products_en001.htm

I will not carry one. As it is I forget my keys regularly. To me it is pointless and intrusive. I too like 'Techno' would risk prison on this issue.

In the event of them bringing this in, I say we seize and destroy all ID cards, and enforce a bit of solidarity with those sensible enough to refuse to carry them.

Well it seems there are some of you out there who are afraid to be identified, afraid to be known for who you are - - - - I wonder why ?

Good boy. Now the next one I taught you . . .

remember?

"I bet you're all too afraid to be microchipped aren't you . . . what have you got to hide?"

and

"I bet you have a problem with pre-emptive arrest and detention for peaceful political dissent, don't you? Those Fairford coach protestors were kidnapped by the police for national security reasons!"

not forgetting

"You're all crazy conspiracy theorists who think David Blunkett has touted legislation proposing the suspension of parliament in case of 'political or economic instability' and biometric mandatory ID cards. You're mad! David Blunkett never said these things. I bet you think that the government lied about Iraqi WMD too! You guys are PARANOID!"

I too would like to think I'd risk prison rather than be forced to carry a biometric ID. I hope a widespread campaign emerges. Basically the debate all comes down to a simple point. The ID is only acceptable if both politicians and technology can be trusted, clearly neither can - technology is consistently flawed and I'm sure more devastating forms of fraud would materialise, and equally, politicians cannot be trusted with such a tool given the well documented history of targeting legitimate dissenters under the cover of a genuine, but exaggerated threat.

Poll tax was last big civil disobedience campaign won by us v the state.

It would need local groups and a very good campaign to convince people (such as my mum)of the false fear of Muslim terrorists is the reason for them and of couse more state control

I suspect more people will be opposed to the introduction once it becomes better known that the ID is not simply a new version of the type we already carry (name, photo etc) but will be biometric and contain far more information. Someone earlier in this thread doesn't seem to have realised this, and last night on BBC World when they were interviewing people in the street, this became apparent again. There's hope yet.

One major concern about the proposed new ID cards is this: as reported by the BBC ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3654621.stm), one of the biometric options being looked at is computer software that records the facial dimensions of the individual.

Why is this significant? We already have a network of CCTV cameras linked up to a facial recognition software, Visionics’ “FaceIt”. We’ve had it in East London for some time. The idea is that this stuff can pick out a given face in a crowd and therefore be used to trace given ‘suspects’. In practice, however, it seems that it rarely, if ever, works, since for the system to work properly, “it needs pictures taken of suspects from at least five different angles and the Metropolitan Police doesn't take that many.” (report in the Guardian, 2002, Thursday June 13, 2002; available at  http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,736312,00.html).

If the Home Office opts for this form of ID, the consequences are far more worrying than even those which involve iris scans or fingerprints. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that the facial scans taken for the ID cards could dramatically improve the hit rate of this software. And of course, rather than needing to arrest someone in order to get the necessary data, there would be a database of (ideally) the entire population of the UK. Cops take loads of photos of people on demos, but it presently is impossible (way too labour–intensive) to do any more than identify ‘trouble-makers’ or ‘ring-leaders’. But with this technology, you could potentially get the name of everybody on a million-person demo who walks past a camera in Trafalgar Square.

In reply to Tom, I’m afraid that if I’m right, one possible consequence of this is that the technology could indeed be used to trace illegal immigrants. In theory, if a face shows up on the system that isn’t already logged, it could be flagged for action (if it is deemed necessary - I don’t disagree with your point that Capital knowingly and happily employs many such immigrants). Similarly, those people who have yet to fork out their £35 quid, be it for financial or political reasons, would also stick out like a sore thumb in CCTV footage of the average crowd.

This means that the only weapon against the system is, as people have pointed out, a mass boycott. However, it is likely that the main selling point will be the “anti-terrorism” aspect. Just more evidence of how vital the current discourse of terrorism is to the interests of Capital.

disabling cameras etc.

If the state will imprision people for not registering with it and seek to detect them 24/hrs a day in public thats pretty damn fascist. I simply refuse to be subject to such a totalitarian tool - history teaches us that once the tools are created then someone will rise to use them. Maybe card ID dissidents will end up fleeing and claiming asylum. That'd be a laugh. Any ideas on destinations?

Or is there likely to be a large breach of privacy by carrying ID cards? I'm doing research right now to propose that Britons should carry ID cards for a debate an having great difficulty finding any positive search results. Until I started this I had no problem.... If I was in an accident doctors could find out who I was and if I had any other health issues. There are many more reasons that we SHOULD carry them, but it would appear that the negatives are taking over.

Should we just be more optimistic?