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Surveillance society must be stopped
THE home secretary may have capped the price of stand-alone ID cards at £30 but that only includes the price for the piece of plastic and the paperwork. There are enormous costs associated with the infrastructure that ID cards would require.
That £30 will not cover the cost of installing biometric scanners in hospitals and general practice surgeries. It will not pay for the large number of civil servants required to administer the scheme. It certainly will not cover the costs of the National Identity Register, the most complex and ambitious IT project that the government has ever attempted.
Independent experts at the London School of Economics have estimated that the entire scheme could cost up to £19.2bn to implement. That cost represents hundreds of pounds for every man, woman and child in the country. If we do not pay the full cost when applying for the card, we will pay through our taxes.
Now Tony McNulty has admitted that there are difficulties with biometric technology. This will come as no surprise to anyone who is familiar with the results of the biometric enrolment trials conducted on behalf of the Home Office; trials which encountered failure rates of one in 20, one in five and one in three for iris, fingerprint and facial verification.
Article Posted at www.KnowledgeDrivenRevolution.com
He has also asserted that opposition to the government's proposals has moved on from civil liberties to issues of cost and practicality. Yet campaigners against the proposals – including NO2ID, Liberty and Privacy International – have always been clear that despite the myriad flaws with the scheme from a pragmatic perspective, the greater danger comes from the National Identity Register; the creation of a database state
and a surveillance society.
The creation of a central database, which will track every occasion on which the ID cards would be used to prove identity, would be a great infringement of our civil liberties.
The use of a central government database to restrict access to essential public services, such as health and education, would alter fundamentally our society; there can be no benefit in creating an underclass of people who must hide from the state and shy away from any interaction with public bodies.
On Tuesday evening, our elected representatives in Westminster will have the opportunity to reject the Identity Cards Bill; the opportunity to protect some of the cherished freedoms and values that define our society and for which many have died. They should avail themselves of that opportunity.
Geraint Bevan, NO2ID (Scotland), 3e
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