EMBARGOED UNTIL 00:01, 25/9/06

Blair “building tools of totalitarianism”

Civil liberty campaigners NO2ID [1] this evening attacked Tony Blair on
his personal role in promoting the national identity scheme and ID cards, branding both him and it a dangerous threat to civil liberties. A full-page advertisement in an edition of The Guardian to be distributed at Labour Party Conference on Monday shows Blair in menacing monochrome, with a bar-code forming a Hitler-style moustache, over the words “ID cards have worked well in Europe before.”[2]

Phil Booth, NO2ID’s National Coordinator said:

Tony Blair is not Hitler. But he has personally driven this insidious ID scheme. Sneering at the idea that citizens could have anything to fear from a state they have learnt to distrust, he calls it modernisation [3].

History says different. It is an old idea.

The vast majority of ID schemes in Europe were started or imposed on whole populations by dictators, or under Nazi or Soviet occupation. Almost all have been used to harass political opposition, bully minorities, or facilitate mass-murder. Everywhere – without exception – the purpose has been monitoring the people for official purposes.

Blair, in thrall to technologies he barely understands, proposes to number, tag and track everyone and allow government to link unprecedented amounts of personal information [4]. He is blindly building the tools of totalitarianism simply because they might come in handy, with no control or clue as to how they ultimately will be used.

-ENDS-

Notes for editors:
1) NO2ID is the non-partisan national campaign against ID cards and the database state. See http://www.no2id.net

2) Reproduced here: http://www.silicon.com/publicsector/0,3800010403,39164469-2,00.htm

3) E.g. Tony Blair: “I don’t destroy liberties, I protect them”, The Observer, 26 February 2006
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1718133,00.html

4) See, for example:
Cabinet Office ‘Transformational Government’ strategy – http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/e-government/strategy/

Citizen Information Project – http://www.gro.gov.uk/cip/

Vision Statement on Information Sharing, 13 September 2006 -
http://www.dca.gov.uk/foi/sharing/information-sharing.pdf [PDF]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – 21/9/06

TOP COMICS say NO to ID cards

When 10 of the sharpest acts from the stand-up circuit [1] turn out on a Sunday night to support a two-year-old pressure-group it is a sign that something big is happening.

Connoisseurs of comedy are in for a treat at the Hackney Empire on 1st
October [2], as Daniel Kitson MCs a very special benefit gig for NO2ID – the national campaign against ID cards and the database state [3] – entitled “Who Do You Think You Are?”

Featuring lightning-witted TV favourite Dara O’Briain (host of Mock The Week) and no less than four Edinburgh award winners, it would be a great bill at any club, or for any cause – but it has been pulled together in a few short weeks. So why are they (and all the supporting staff) doing it for nothing?

Guy Herbert, General Secretary of NO2ID says:

This is a huge political issue, but not a party-political one. When your life is put on a database, you lose your liberty along with your privacy whoever you are. NO2ID is completely non-partisan which makes it very easy for people to support us without feeling they might be committed to a hidden agenda, but we’re still astonished and encouraged by the generosity of all these performers with their time.

If you read about how you’re going to be on this database, that database, and the other database, the cumulative effect is ludicrous. By numbering everybody and everything, the world is going to be a better place?

Unless you’re a bureaucrat, that’s a laughable idea. So why not laugh at it?

Lucy Porter, a well-loved comedian appearing on the night says:

ID cards go against the fundamental principle that the state’s job is to serve us. It is the electorate that holds the power, not the officials and spokesmen.

- ENDS -

Notes for editors:

1) Line-up: Dara O’Briain, Paul Sinha (Perrier nominee 2006), Josie Long
(Perrier best newcomer 2006), Kevin Eldon, Lucy Porter, Wil Hodgson (Perrier best newcomer 2004), Gary Le Strange (Perrier best newcomer 2003), Andrew O’Neill, Ben Norris. MC: Daniel Kitson.

2) Venue details: Hackney Empire, 291 Mare Street, London, E8 1EJ.
Sunday 1st October 2006, Doors 7.30pm. Tickets: £12.50.
Box Office 020 8985 2424 or book online at www.hackneyempire.co.uk

3) All proceeds to NO2ID – the national campaign against ID cards and the database state. NO2ID is a non-partisan campaign group supported by all sorts of people from a wide range of political viewpoints, and none.

Find out more at www.no2id.net

For more information, future or immediate interview contact
Guy Herbert, NO2ID General Secretary (07956 544 308); or
Michael Parker, NO2ID Press Officer (07773 376 166)

For performers, please go through Matty Mitford, show producer (07946 265 757). Please don’t contact performers’ agents in connection with this event – they aren’t getting paid. We expect Lucy Porter, Ben Norris and others to be willing to speak about this in a personal capacity.

18 September 2006

Holidaymakers returning to work or school after the summer would do well to renew their passports before putting them away for another year because, from October 5th, the price of an adult passport will be raised again – from £51 to £66 [1]. In future, a ‘premium service’ (one day) renewal will cost £108 for adults and £93 for children.

This 57% increase in 10 months – a doubling of the price since October 2003[2] – is actually being driven by the ID cards scheme and will not be the last, according to privacy and civil liberties campaigners, who warn that from next year children over 16 applying for their first adult passport will be forced to attend an interview at one of 69 new ‘enrolment’ centres [3].

Phil Booth, NO2ID [4] National Coordinator said:
Under this government, the price of your passport has more than tripled. And the £100 passport is just around the corner, once it forces people to be registered for an ID card at renewal.

Now they’ll be interrogating kids, yet another so-called ’security measure’ that will cause just as much mayhem as the ridiculous new rules on photos this summer [5]. How many hoops must law-abiding British citizens jump through for the convenience of computers and officials on an ID power trip?

It’s only common sense to renew your passport now [6] and buy yourself and your family 10 years’ freedom from untold bureaucracy, punitive charges, invasion of privacy and the inevitable IT and administrative failures as the government merges our passports with its catastrophic ID scheme.

- ENDS -

Notes for editors

1) http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/66522.html – ‘Second jump in passport cost to £66 branded a tax on holidays’, 25/7/06

2) The government first claimed it was introducing anti-fraud measures such as microchips and biometrics in October 2003. In fact, a big chunk of the
2003 rise went to pay off debt to the Treasury after UKPS’s 1999 computer crisis:

http://www.channel4.com/news/special-reports/special-reports-storypage.jsp?id=3D2581&parasStartAt=3D0

3) As announced with minimal fanfare in a Home Office press release today, 18/9/06: ‘No idea where your ID is?’ -

http://press.homeoffice.gov.uk/press-releases/where-is-your-id

4) ‘10,000 a week have passport applications rejected over photo rule’, Daily Mail 11/6/06

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=3D390116&in_page_id=3D1770

and ‘Six-year-old has passport rejected for being too pale’, 18/9/06

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=3D405596&in_page_id=3D1770

5) NO2ID is the UK-wide, non-partisan campaign against compulsory ID cards and the National Identity Register, see http://www.no2id.net

6) ‘Renew for Freedom’ campaign – http://www.renewforfreedom.org/index.html