Almost irrelevant

Firstly I agree that the notion that 28 million people will just volunteer to pay for an ID card is almost hilarious in it's naievity.

But as we begin to understand that

1) The ACPO is still fighting to retain the DNA of the 4 million-odd UK citizens it's already collected,

2) That the ACPO is also routinely collecting and storing surveillance, intelligence and images of people attending meetings, protests and political rallys,

3) That GCHQ is looking to intercept & store all comms, web use, emails and phone calls and share that across the whole of Europe as requested by the EU

4) The the Independant Safeguarding Authority is (according to today's press) now pushing hard to extend thier safeguarding requests out beyond normal jobs involving working with children to what appears to as much of the population as they can bully into it (note the sinister quote today about 'you might find it easier to tender for contracts regardless if you can prove all your staff have been checked)

5) That the Government is still allowing hundreds and hundreds or public bodies intercept and surveillance powers under RIPA, and is developing the ability to share all collected information across all Government bodies

6) That regardless of the right/wrogns of the ID card there is no plan to dismantle the National Information Register which underpins it on the grounds that it will be used for biometric passports - and that the Tories have avoided a commitment to kill the NIR off as well.

7) That the scope of other data collection (e.g. Police ANPR) is being widened and expanded without reference to parliamentary approval.

One has to ask - what is the point of the ID card anymore anyway? The Government is already collecting shitloads of information on all of us, and GCHQ is already processing it and analysing it !

The Government already knows who most of the troublemakers in the UK are. It knows where we live, who we have in out phone books, tracks our travel and movements via techs such as mobile phone trangulation.

There's almost no point in arguing about the ID Card - Labour has already set up most of the the mechanisms required for total state surveillance. We're already there....