2012, and rushed through in the summer as we're all too rapped up in the Olympics to notice....

----

Passive field, January two thousand and twelve.

A nation that stands alone.

Cold voices, faces pale, gathered unto their judgment day. -

track: Honour - VNV Nation

They can kiss my pasty white ass if they think they're sticking my details on another database for some clerk to lose!

Fix THAT problem and i'll start listening.

They obviously can't find the bloody laptop they left it on, so they can't print the data on the cards!

<i>The third priority outlined in the document is "to issue cards to those who are employed in positions of trust where identity assurance is critical to determining their appropriateness for that employment".</i>

So, are they suggesting that teachers, doctors and so forth will be the initial subjects of ID cards? Because I can see problems with expecting such opinionated and highly organised (i.e. with strong unions and associations) folk to be your vanguard.

I might just publish all my details on t'intertubes now and save the Government time & effort losing it...

*The coat with ***BEWARE!!!! FOREIGNER!!!!*** emblazoned in fluorescent orange on the back please...*

"while protecting personal information from abuse."

Protected, aye, right up until you *post the bloody database on a set on unencrypted CDs*.

Has the government invested too much to admit failure, with the claims that ID cards will magically eliminate all fraud and crime ?

By 2012, the high-density DVD format war will have been well and truly won. There may even be another pretender on the horizon, able to store countless gigabytes of data.

If we're going to be sharing ID data with the United States and others, then it would be impractical to expect the identity data of so many millions of people to squeeze onto old-fashioned CD-ROMs or DVDs.

So much more convenient for the enterprising community of identity thieves if the precious data can be stored, misplaced, lost and found in one convenient package.

I hope that my ID card will be able to store some of my favourite family photos, holiday snaps and my own personal theme tune along with my retina scan, fingerprint and signature -- any routine search by the police would be accompanied by a bit of Jimmy Cliff and could be enlivened by a quick trawl through pics of my last trip to Cornwall.

"The third priority outlined in the document is "to issue cards to those who are employed in positions of trust where identity assurance is critical to determining their appropriateness for that employment".

That doesn't make any sense how will asking a security guard for his details determine anything at all?

What they really want is to get the people who will be demanding to see our ID used to carrying the official ID themselves so that they treat people without ID as suspicious. Thus creating another subtle push to get people to accept them.

I'll be prepared to give them my personal information when I can keep a database on my computer containing the corresponding information for the Cabinet.

If Cameron, the first credible Tory in years, campaigns on this point (liberty, track records, Labour-bashing, etc., all Tory sweet-spots), it may well be the election swinger, especially if we're vocal enough - OK so Labour have no concept of backing down (see EU Constitution/Treaty), so if Cameron hollers loud enough on this issue, and as the Tories now seem to be to the left of New Labour, I'm in grave danger of voting for them. You've no idea quite how f*cking worrying that is to my inner communist!

If, and it's a big if, they can roll out ID cards in 2012, I bet that they try and force everybody involved in the Olympics to use them. The "excuse" will be, "to protect the public from buying and using fake tickets" and of course, "terrorism".

On the other hand, spending £10 to £20 billion on high tech library cards right now when the country finances are stretched to the limit may not seem a very good idea.

It will protect you from everything! You'll never be subject to fraud, you won't ever be mugged again and you can even use it to stop little green men from invading good ol' blighty! Hurray!

.......as another commentator put it:

DO NOT WANT

How the heck will they ever know that I'm in the UK at all? er, right, they'll track me down with this comment, can't they?

EAfH - who prefers being an anon coward

Why don't we just get all the foreigners to ware little yellow or pink triangles on their jackets. Then we wont even have to ask to see there ID cards.

The dead bird icon for the death of liberty.

And anyone who thinks it does should watch 'Demolition Man' again.

Jolyon

How am I going to know who I am if I don't have an ID card?

Here's the order that ID card enrolement should foillow. Each group should be fully enroled before the next group starts:

1) Members of Parliament.

2) the House of Lords.

3) the Police and the Civil Service.

That allows everybody who thinks ID cards ara a good idea to demonstrate their faith by being first on the register.

It also provides a big enough enough database for most of the design, implementation and operational mistakes to show up. Nobody else should be fitted up with an ID card until all problems discovered by the first three groups are fixed and, if necessary, they have all been been re-enroled successfully.

I choose PH because even she's not stupid enough to think that ID cards are useful.

Where is our democracy?

Which individual started all this recent ID card business anyway? Seriously. Blunkett? Straw? Blair? Who was in charge of the department that got the ball rolling with this one? I can't recall whose 'baby' this is and I'm intrigued.

the eu wide exchange of future id schemes is currently stymied by teh concept of who will reciprocally trust and distribute each signing authorities' digital signature?

once this 'minor' hurdle is overcome, there's nowt to stop the european citizens' card being implemented or being required to be implemented in each of the currently 27 eu domains formerly known as nation states. The actual use and purpose of the european citizens' card is still yet to be officially defined but will likely encompass access to health providers, optionally ePass border control functionalities, optionally extended access control for Biometric Security, bancomat/ATM functions, money laundering traceability financial identity code, national lotteries, Visa Electron, etcetera. Britain has not yet stated that their implementation of the ecc will have an identity function but it might have.

with a 2012 launch date , the ukid is looking plesiochronous to the eu ecc. (gooogle for CEN 224 WG 15 European Citizen Card working group for more strakh happy news, citizen) It's not just the UK.

"We'll always have Paris" as we slip away to North Africa to avoid the eGov yarbles.....

The government has yet to publish any arguments FOR an ID card.

All we've had so far is a series of "STOP TEH TERRARISTS!!" and "Prevent benefit fraud!"

How?

The benefit fraud one doesn't matter - the losses to fraudsters are a tiny fraction of the cost of ID cards, even assuming that it magically works.

Mad, bad and dangerous to know - they're Blunkettcards.

@Jolyon

Watch Demolition Man *again*???

You are a cruel cruel man!!!

"... where identity assurance is critical ..."

I don't believe my colleagues have any doubt I'm the same peron who arrived on day one, and has been underpaid for years ever since.

I'll quit my job, there and then.

'If, and it's a big if, they can roll out ID cards in 2012, I bet that they try and force everybody involved in the Olympics to use them. The "excuse" will be, "to protect the public from buying and using fake tickets" and of course, "terrorism".'

I've been thinking this from the start. It fits with the "ID cards are not compulsory, you just need them to claim benefits, get a job, have a bank account, go abroad, get medical treatment, rent a DVD" voluntary nature of the project. "You don't have to go to the Olympics, sir, but if you do we need to see proper ID, and no a passport is not good enough."

>Here's the order that ID card enrolement should foillow. Each group should be fully enroled before the next group starts:

>1) Members of Parliament.

A good idea, but then it occurred to me that there's a higher level - the companies that bid for the contracts and make unrealistic promises whilst paying the likes of Blunkett:

Each company that puts in a bid to design, run, manage, lose, corrupt the data whilst possibly employing govt-approved illegal immigrants and offshoring the data entry to Nigeria should have ID cards created by one of the other bidders. They should be given to high-level employees and 'executive' directors.

a) they can fight amongst themselves by showing how much info can be obtained from the cards/system of the competition

b) if they don't do this, or if there is a clear winner, the cards should be obtainable for a small charge to see what other hackers can do.

c) A CD of all the card holders information should be downloadable for the same reasons.

Of course all of the bank, council, tax, internet, library transactions that would require an ID card will have to use one, so a final test is each week one of the competitors gets to have their cards inexplicably disabled or lost to see how life becomes when every organisation cannot verify your identity and you can't obtain a new card without *proof* of ID.

You know, I'm sure there's a nugget of a good idea there somewhere!

The idea that politicians would drop the idea if they had to carry ID cards first has no legs, unfortunately. Firstly, politicians are the most narcissistic self-promoters in the known universe. They spend their entire lives basically making their identity as open as possible, measuring their self-worth in column inches about them in the Sun and the Daily Heil. Give them an ID card and they'll probably staple it to their forehead. They'll be *glad* when someone steals their identity because it means that one more person knows their name. And then of course it'll be a news story; they can go on TV and say "well obviously there are some early problems but with 1 squillion more of your money we can fix it", and it doesn't matter to them how much we fume and dissect their logic in El Reg because they'll have got another TV appearance, which is what it's all about. They won't have any problems because they're government ministers, any inconveniences caused can quickly be 'fast-tracked' and fixed by junior bureaucrats.

As for contractors, the company directors, if forced to carry one, probably wouldn't notice, much less care. They wouldn't care about whether or not you need to present it at the supermarket because they don't go to the supermarket, they have PAs for that. They'd probably leave it behind most of the time - they don't live in depressed areas, they wear expensive suits, they don't buy illegal drugs (or if they do it's on the end of a very long supply chain), they're generally white and over 40, they never walk anywhere... in short company directors are never, ever stopped and searched. Any of the lower ranks who were forced to carry one wouldn't complain because they wouldn't want to lose their job.

There's only one place to implement ID cards, and that's up Gordon Brown's rectum. Although I'm not entirely sure he has one. It would explain a lot.

Remember that man whose job was supplying criminals with forged documents? They asked him what he thought of ID cards and he said enthusiastically, "I can't wait !"

British jobs for British criminals !

I WILL NEVER ACCEPT AN ID CARD.

I WILL PROTEST AGAINST ONE.

I WILL RIOT AGAINST ONE.

I WILL GO TO PRISON KICKING AND SCREAMING WITHOUT ONE.

on release I WILL RIOT AGAIN.

NEVER, EVER, EVER.

I was born free, and will remain free!

As they can track my IP there is no point in giving my name.

Seconded (Thirded?).

"Congratulations Mr CEO, you've won the highly lucrative Government ID IT contract. Now if you'd kindly demonstrate efficacy and robustness of your system in a real ife setting by having the honour of registering as #UK-2012-00000001".

"..... employed in positions of trust where identity assurance is critical to determining their appropriateness for that employment" has so many things wrong with it!

eg. I must have an Government ID card (GID) reader and Retina/finger print reader so that I can be assured the person before me is who the card says they are. I must also have connection to the GID database to compare the GID Card data with the data held - just in case someone has, unlikely I grant you, falsified a card to look like a genuine GID card. If I then detect an error I must decline - for safety - the service offered by the, for example, Doctor and report them to the police as a criminal. Obviously, the "fake" doctor could do what they like if I'm unconscious and unable to interrogate their GID. If I don't have the reader/connection then the GID card gives less assurance than the badges currently issued so why have them? I'm getting giddy with all this spin.

There still seems to be a misunderstanding here, as well. GIDs have absolutely nothing to do with data security/protection - let's get that right from the start! That they are related and one is a pre-requisite for the other seems to have escaped the administrative numpties. Fair play to them though, they are constructing a fairly good coral and barb wire lined route to a stupendous and pyrrhic waste of looted taxpayers cash.

I've paid my bit towards NO2ID and I hope others are too.

> " I can't recall whose 'baby' this is and I'm intrigued."

The BBC let drop today that Gordy wasn't really a big supporter of ID cards. So it is a most intriguing question. Especially when we notice that the concept of ID cards has been on the political agenda in Australia, the EU, and the USA at the same time.

What could the common factor be? Democracy - perhaps? White supremacism?

"As for contractors, the company directors, if forced to carry one, probably wouldn't notice, much less care"

They would if they had to carry the card created by the organisation competing for the quote! Who had access to all of their details!

Similarly, the competitor would be carrying one of their cards.

Each bidder will try to crack the other's card in an attempt to win the bid, whilst at the same time make their card useless even if it is cracked and the database made public.

If neither card/database is up to it the bidder fails until someone can go through such a rigorous process that they proceed to the next stage of public scrutiny... which, of course, it will never come to because the concept of absolute security through government obscurity (CD in the post) is an impossible concept.

You can put it where the sun don't shine.

I will never repeat NEVER carry on Why?

Your record on data security, bringing in IT systems on time and in budget stinks.

Why not let us all carry a cd the we too can loose it along with your 1984 style need for tracking us..

Of course you could use:

Our passports or

Our driving licenses or

Our credit cards or

Our NI or NHS data or

Our mobile phones to track us.

But then that would be too easy....

Alternatively, you could tell any terrorist that these cards will be mandatory and they HAVE to have one LOL

Sheesh, talk about naive politicians. Will they never learn....

As Billy Connolly said " we carry a ( popular BC expletive here) ID card around with us... "it's called a FINGER PRINT"

Since you in the UK already have passports, driving licenses, credit cards, etc.. why is there such a big fuss about ID cards?

... we need to start a revolution and bust this government out of office before they do any more damage.

@Luke

it's not the ID card as such but the ruddy great database they are building behind it. Hospital file, education record, job history, criminal record (reported crimes etc), credit history, voting record, driver details, vehicle history all available from one place, (for a small fee).

"The Identity and Passport Service successfully introduced the first biometric passport on time and on budget in 2006, with over 8 million now issued."

That'll be them thar passport things that are valid for 10 years but the chip containing the biometrics is only guarenteed for 2? And what happens again if the chip doesn't work when queried at border control? And that is a success? What kind of friggin newspeak is that?

Who said:

"We all suffer crime, the poorest and most vulnerable most of all, it is the duty of the government to protect them. But we can make choices in spending too. And instead of wasting hundreds of millions of pounds on compulsory ID cards as the Tory Right demand, let that money provide thousands of extra police officers on the beat in our local communities."

Time to storm the Winter Palace, comrades.

So now we know why Straw Jack wants to build Titan Gaols ... so there is enough prison estate to lock up ID card protesters.

See how it builds up ... suspect murderers allowed bail (if you're an ex-copper, of course), short sentences (if at all) for violent criminals etc.

Up the revolution brother!

We will not go quietly into the night. We will go kicking and screaming and spitting and flicking cigarette butt ends into the eyes of our Orwellian oppressors and generally swearing a lot as well.

Who wants to bet that as we get closer to 2012, security at the Olympics will be held up as a reason for the need of the so called protection that ID Cards offer?

V is for Vendetta.

One question: When we eventually "apply" for our ID cards, how will they know that the identity information we provide is correct?

There are three possibilities:

1) They can't really check the identity info, in which case, surely we can all apply as "Gordon Brown" and see what happens...

2) They can check the info based on existing records, which raises the question of why we 'need' ID cards in the first place.

3) They don't care whether the information is correct, but whatever you send will become your new identity - there for tracking you from now on. This clearly signifies a shifting of the balance between subject and state. It also allows people to reinvent themselves (say, illegal immigrant to 3rd generation British subject).

Since (1) is completely pie-shop, and (3) raises far too many nasty questions, I am sure the Government would suggest (2) as the correct answer. The reasoning would be something like "currently it *can* be done, but it's complex and painful - this will make it much easier". To me, that isn't reason enough!

Cliff, you'll find that when the Tories finally have something that looks like a manifesto, it won't be the things that they say, but the ways that they do them, and every last promise will be farmed out to the wonderful free market, the very same one that has sustained government for the last 30 years and has delivered very little that has directly benefited we shareholders of UK plc (oh dear... that didn't last very long as an idea did it, primarily because shareholders have some kind of power over their companies). They can talk as much as they want while they are in opposition, but as long as everything is run for profit and always with the eye on the bottom line nothing and no-one will improve the quality of our lives, and whoever is standing outside Number 10 on a Friday morning in 2009 or 2010 will be quickly pulled down into the quagmire that was born of Thatcher's mantra of Value For Money and that has turned this country into a banana republic without any bananas. *breathes*