Cameron needs to explain fully his ID card opposition

David Cameron has announced that any future Tory government will abolish the ID card scheme.

All well and good but...

He has also said that he will not offer a referendum on the EU constitution when/if he comes to power if the Irish have been conned into saying yes when they are forced to vote again.

Will Cameron say that he will abolish the ID cards no matter what, and not just abolish plans for them if they have not been introduced by the time of the next election?

A sensible view on ID cards

Retired law lord Lord Steyn has spoken out on the folly of identity cards.

In a London memorial lecture, Lord Steyn warned that ID cards, and the national identity database which will store the personal data, are steps towards a 'Kafkaesque' society.

He accused the Home Office of introducing the cards step by step as a way of 'conditioning' and 'softening up' public opinion.

Ministers say the scheme will help fight terrorism, crime and illegal immigration and help people easily prove their identity.

But Lord Steyn says there is 'absolutely no evidence' they would protect the country against terrorism. Their introduction was an unjustified 'invasion' of civil liberties, the former judge added.

He said: 'The commitment, by and large, of the British people to European constitutional principles and ideals does not require us to adopt an ID card system.

'In my view a national identity card system is not necessary in our country. No further money should be spent on it. The idea should be abandoned.

'The Home Office now proudly asserts that comprehensive surveillance has become routine. If that is true, the resemblance to the world of Kafka is no longer so very distant.'

'To illustrate the scale of the surveillance, one can refer to the estimated 4.2 million CCTV cameras in operation in this country. It is said that a person living and working in London is likely to be filmed about 300 times on an average day.

'The cost to the taxpayer is several hundred millions of pounds. No doubt CCTV coverage has, in some cases, proved effective in combating crime. But it is unclear how cost effective generally the system is. Some of the types of surveillance introduced by the State border on the ridiculous.'

Labour has finally lost the plot

7 February 2009 will go down as the day that this Government finally lost the plot.

In the past eleven, getting on for twelve years, it has made some ridiculous decisions - kneejerk reactions to problems of its own making.

The ID scheme is bad enough but the Government has announced that it is compiling a database of every movement in and out of the UK by air, sea or rail.

Ministers give the usual excuse about how it is necessary to prevent terrorism, illegal immigration and organised crime.

But how, exactly, will it stop any of those activities?

This Government is obsessed with collecting information - and then losing it. The sooner we are governed by people who have some idea of what they are doing the better.

Gordon can't listen - the EU won't let him

Last Thursday the country gave Gordon Brown a good kicking. At the weekend the Prime Minister went on telly to admit that mistakes had been made and that he would listen and lessons would be learned.

Is he going to do a U-turn on the abolition of the 10p tax rate? No.
Is he going to forget the ridiculous ID Cards plan? No.
Is he going to cut stealth taxes? No.
Will he restore the great pension grab which wrecked Britain's pension system? No.
Would he drop his plan for 42-days' detention without trial? No.
Is he going to abandon his plans for taxing people who have too much rubbish? Yes.

Then, Downing Street announced that actually no he wasn't abandoning the rubbish plan. What they didn't tell you was the reason why - the EU. This new law is the result of an EU directive and Britain always implements EU directives - even those that harm the country.

Makes you proud to be British. Vote Labour.

Another government disaster...

Unbelievably, the Government has lost details of 25 million child benefit recipients. The information including bank details - contained on two disks - was sent to the National Audit office by unrecorded delivery. In the House of Commons today the deputy chancellor (Gordon Brown still runs the economy) Alistair Darling apologised for what he said was "an extremely serious failure" but insisted people were not at risk from ID fraud.

Can anyone now seriously believe that the government can be trusted with ID cards?

The surveillance society...

An interesting new book has landed on my desk. The Road to Southend Pier details Ross Clark's struggle against the surveillance society.

Britain’s Information Commissioner said that we are sleepwalking into a surveillance society so Ross Clark decided to find out if that was true.

These are some of the facts uncovered by Mr Clark:

• There are 4·2 million CCTV cameras in Britain, one for every 14 people
• In 2004 Melbourne dismantled its 23 cameras because they did not justify the A$500,000 they cost annually
• Britons are the third most spied on people on earth; only China and Malaysia spy more on their citizenry
• In 1998 Newham introduced a facial recognition software. Unfortunately, it didn’t work on sunny days and had a tendency to confuse young people and women and had a tendency to recognise black people
• Despite the claim that DNA is foolproof – it isn’t. If everyone in Britain (60 million people) was on the database the chances of a mistake being made by misidentifying someone’s DNA at a crime scene is actually one in 16
• In 2007 John Reid admitted that the Prevention of Terrorism Act had been drafted in such a way that people on control orders i.e. terrorists could not have their fingerprints and DNA taken
• In 2007 the Home Office admitted that despite the plethora of CCTV, DNA databases, tagging and police surveillance it had “lost” 322 registered sex offenders
• In 2005 2,000 people randomly volunteered to be surveyed for the biometric ID card. It took an average of seven minutes and 56 seconds to record the information. To cover the entire country would take 905 man years
• Between April and June 2007 the six largest European airlines lost 1·12 million pieces of luggage – this at a time when passengers and their baggage are supposed to be monitored every step of their journey
  
  
  
  

Picture says it all