11 October 2007

NO2ID [1] withdraws its press release of yesterday: “Home Office dare not admit motive for ID cards” [2], as a government document now sets out clearly the ambition for a single centralised government file to track every person in Britain throughout their whole life.

Its release overshadowed by the Chancellor’s Pre-Budget Report, the blandly-named “Service Transformation Agreement” [3] issued by HM Treasury, sets out in fifty-eight pages a general vision and departmental service plans. The latter, forming the bulk of the document, explain how each government department will use “identity management” to collate and share information about citizens and businesses.

Phil Booth, NO2ID’s National Coordinator, said:

Astonishingly, the stalker state now swaggers out of the shadows expecting a welcome. Presented in the soothing tone of ‘customer service’, this is an explicit plan for the centralised surveillance of every significant event in every British resident’s life – a modern Stasi file.

-ENDS-

Notes for editors:
1) NO2ID is the UK-wide non-partisan campaign against ID cards and the database state. Scroll down http://www.no2id.net for a list of ‘database state’ initiatives that NO2ID is actively opposing.

2) See: http://www.no2id.net/news/pressRelease/release.php?name=H_O_dare_not

3) See: http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/media/B/9/pbr_csr07_service.pdf

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