...for more data to be lost. Yay.

I wouldn't trust them to organise a pissup at a brewery. They'd lose the kegs on a train.

All issued to the same ukraine human trafficing ring.

Does this identity scheme include a big yellow star?

Just so we can identify the foreign workers in our midsts (they're all after our jobs you know, and you can't trust them in the slightest.)

I really look forward to our ever trustworthy NuGov tracking our travel, correlating it, selling it to interested parties and profiling us, (goes to Thailand once a year, works at a school, obviously a sex tourist - bring him in, we don't need anymore evidence then that. Not enough evidence to bring charges? No matter it'll go on the required extended criminal record check.)

NuGov - Empowering the people that empower it.

I have no idea as to why the government delays so much with ID cards.

Many countries around the world have them. Either just say "as of tomorrow..." or abandon the whole thing.

Stop shilly-shamying around.

Plus, giving ID cards to non-Europeans only? What's that about? A whiff of discrimination?

"Oh, hello.... South America? Yes, sorry but you are not yet taken over by anal-retentive sods from the EU yet, so you are not welcome here... Therefore we have to track your every movements incase you are a ner'do'well...Same for you Africa (except Nigeria and Ghana for some strange reason), South Asia and East Asia..."

Sorry, but there are many "breaches" publicly known in the all new American styled "UK Borders Security Force Team" - there are many airports and ferry ports where they just look at your passport and wave you through regardless.

The only place I have seen them actually ask "are you here to falsely claim benefits and stay longer than 6 months and work with false ID and NI number?" is Heathrow...

Jaqui Smith - I think you should take note... Or just have a bitch-fight with Teresa May like you usually do when you get frustrated..

(Thats the MP, not the adult-movie star...)

Clearly the eBorders agency cannot control 100% of all cross-border movements, unless they are going to set up checkpoints on every footpath across the UK's land border. There are places not too far from where I live where I can put one foot in the UK and one foot in another country.

Slightly off topic, but Jacqui Smith made the claim that the new fingerprint readers can't be defeated and can tell the difference between living and dead fingers. IMHO she's an incompetent moron.

The new ones use capacitive screens, similar to the iPod touch. If you swipe your finger across the iPod screen it will detect the finger. Swipe a plastic pen across the screen and the iPod ignores it. Now wrap your finger in plastic and the iPod can still see it, the plastic makes no difference (i.e. the screen on the iPod is capacitive rather than resistive).

You need to recreate the capacitance of the finger, what I'd suggest is fill your fake finger with saline or similar dielectric and touch it to a large grounding body (e.g. yourself). Once you can defeat the iPod with your fake finger that will be good enough, you can start on the biometric reader.

Of the office is yet to be defined. Null labour could do with taking on board the old chestnut of `Preparation and Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance ´. Are they so desperate to get ID cards moving that they will begin without a clear idea of what they are going to do with them?

And no budget yet, If it was a new business venture without an at least reasonable business plan it would be laughable, as it is, it is enough to make one cry.

Your talking about England. The UK isn't connected to another landmass like the way you describe, either that or you have exceptionally long legs.

wtf, the UK's land border?

last time I checked, it's surrounded by water apart from Northern Ireland and I don't see too many people wanting to break in there via Ireland ...

Useful and effective! For example, on demanding your ID card, the police will be in a position to know whether or not you have an ID card.

If you don't have an ID card, you can't pretend to be someone who has one but you can pretend to be someone else who doesn't have one. If you do have an ID card, you can only pretend to be someone who doesn't have one, not someone else who has one.

It will be an offense to not show an ID card if you have one, but not if you don't. It will be an offense to show someone else's ID card, if you have it. It won't be an offense to show your own ID card if you don't have one - just difficult.

This neatly separates the the haves from the have-nots. For the deprived have-nots, perhaps they could consider issuing some form of card stating, 'ID applied for - it's in the post'.

Clearly the whole muddle is a plot to keep us docile by destroying our sanity. In reponse, I am changing my name by deed poll to:

1. That's 40k per duplicate application detected.

2. All duplicates under false names are suspicious applications, however all suspicious applications are not duplicates. The test does not validate that the person is who they say they are, only that they are different from the last time they said it.

3. The visa test already involves a check of the local country id, and this is just a repeat check of that id. You are in effect repeating the ID check of the local system at great cost.

4. The check does not tell you that local id X matches this person Y.

5. If person X applies and previously someone Y claimed to be them, you now flag X as a false positive match. However they are not. Y the first applicant was the false ID.

6. The 1200 a month duplicates is meaningless, unless it was 1200 a month UNDER A DIFFERENT ID, which is not what is claimed. Detecting that person X is person X is not deception if they do not mislead you.

This is politics not science.

I'm not sure i could actually prove who i was to a degree that i would expect to be given an ID card, or if i was then it throws serious doubt over the system.

I don't have a passport!

I haven't updated the address on my drivers licence since i moved.

My motorbike is registered to me, art my address, but was done based on what was written on the change of ownership form. I could have written anything!

I've not been to my GP since i moved, so have not updated those records.

I'd have to prove my identity based on... well i'm not sure. All my bank statements are electronic, my pay slips, my phone bills, my electricity bill. the only thing i get is a council tax bill once a year, and a couple of employment certificates.

In order to validate who i was, you would have to scour loads of disparate systems and compare/confirm the data on them.

I mean, I'm finding it very difficult to believe that this is still going ahead after all the negative publicity, the government's already poor image, the supposed impecunity of the treasury, the economic downturn coupled with ever increasing taxes etc etc.

Bah, I suppose whichever civil servant is in charge of the scheme wanted to make sure his pet project got completed before a government with any sense or popular mandate got in at the next election.

Rob, yes there is a land border.

AC I think you missed the point, which was that Jacqui Smith's claim of being able to screen 100% of crossings is necessarily false *because* of the unpoliced nature of the border with Ireland.

Coming in via Ireland is actually quite a popular route for visa-less travellers wishing to enter the UK. There is almost no risk of detection posed by travelling on a tourist visa into Ireland, then getting a plane/bus/train into the UK. There is also the added bonus that any traveller successfully arriving by this route will never have been seen, registered, or questioned by passport control/immigration; they are not on the system.

Just another one of the many reasons this ID scheme is a total fucking sham.

I still say that ministers that persist in going ahead with schemes that they know the democratic majority object to, and which may be cancelled by the next sensible government; should be made personally responsible for all costs. In the hope that this will stop them draining the public purse for their harebrained schemes for personal infamy.

"Your [sic] talking about England. The UK isn't connected to another landmass like the way you describe, either that or you have exceptionally long legs."

Er ... Northern Ireland and The Republic of Ireland?

That sounds like an offence punisable by a fine to me.

Seriously, I'd get that sorted out because when you get stopped next by the Police (randomly or otherwise) you will have 7 days to show the right details. Happened to me once, not on my licence but on my car registration form (just forgot about that one) ... that went in the post to the DVLA on the way to the Police station to show them my other details 8-) .. these days the access to the DVLA databases is much better and I'm sure this sort of offence is easy low-hanging fruit for the PCs' league tables.

deserves his props for continuing to pursue this at parliamentary level. He's a ledge.

It's a real shame he failed (by a gnats chuff) to snare the LibDem leadership instead of Nick Clegg and also to pick up from Charlie K instead of Ming C.

Huhne would have been able to carry on the syatematic embarassment of Brown and Cameron in the clinical style of Vince Cable. Give it time though...he'll have his day.

I'm not too bothered - unless they are going to still make us pay for it.

They can't seriously still be expecting us all to fork out £35 for a bit of plastic?

And right after they just reported that 5000+ prison officers details are lost on a HDD that the contractors didnt find out for months and almost a year before the Gov are told ? YOU GOTTA BE FXXXING KIDDING ME !!!!

Been said before. You pay for it anyway. Either by paying directly in exchange for your ID, or by paying more tax to cover the cost instead.

Have you ever heard of tax? I think it's costing alot more then £35 per person, and yes I'm quite sure they'll charge us extra for the privilage aswell. They already plan to charge extra if you want a passport and ID

50,000 Chances? Bet they won't need but ONE!

It's all a question of how soon.

I don't think that the initiators of this scheme have actually thought through this ID card thing.

When you have 70 million ID cards finally in issue the percentage of cards that are going to constantly need updating as details change and even worse, re-issued when they get lost (and thus thousands of lost cards floating around the system), it is just leaping from one nightmare to another. This of course does not include the lucrative trade in making and selling forged/cloned cards.

Basically just more of our money down the drain.

Mines the one with the spare ID card in the pocket !

If these things are so great and so required for our safety and the security of the land then why are we starting with immigrants?

Why are we than moving to students?

Surely, the worst thing that could happen is for imposters to rewrite our laws?* The next worst thing they could do would be infiltrate the criminal justice system, the armed forces and our civil service

Compared to this a few foreigners who manage to sponge less than it costs to detect them is nothing

START with the MPs, then the Lords, Judges, Police, Army, Civil Servants... in that rough order.

Alternatively you could avoid making one coherent argument as to any real viable benefit they will produce (which isn't easily proved wrong), hire a very expensive advertising firm to market them to us instead, invest tens of billions of pounds of our money on something we don't want or need in the middle of a recession, force them on students and the vulnerable first, then lose everything on a train

Which scenario is most likely and why?

NO2ID

*Actually I re-read this and realised virtually anyone could do a better job of protecting our laws and rights than the present lot but that’s not the point

"2.5m fingerprint enrolments have generated more than 19,000 matches..." Wow - that's nearly 0.8%. And the false match rate for fingerprinting on the templates they have chosen is?

"So far, this process has brought to notice more than 3,100 applications lodged using a different identity."

At a cost of £133M (tho' does that include all the overseas visa stuff which has been shoved into the FCO budget, and all the staff costs?), plainly a bargain at £43,000 each.

Given the figures for total cost versus issued cards, makes it about £2,700 per card.

It has to be cost effective, compared to exorbitant heating bills and anti-cancer drugs.

They obviously starting with immigrants because they don't have all that much say in matters especially the likes of people in the possession of student or marriage related visa's.

You'll be next, citizens.

geography fail said: "Your [sic] talking about England. The UK isn't connected to another landmass like the way you describe, either that or you have exceptionally long legs."

Er ... Northern Ireland and The Republic of Ireland?

It's worth taking this opportunity to point out that Northern Ireland isn't in the UK.

Ahem, re point about about Northern Ireland not being in the United Kingdom. Ummmm yup, I'm wrong, it's not in Great Britain.

I'll go and hit myself over the head with an atlas now.

... lets hope that Jaqui Smiff has to personally vet, check and countersign each and every one... that should keep the useless [colo(u)rful and gynologically incorrect term of heartfelt abuse] off our back for a while.

""last time I checked, it's surrounded by water apart from Northern Ireland and I don't see too many people wanting to break in there via Ireland ...""

in is in a burgler comming in throiught your bathroom is still in your house even if your tv is in the living room