29/5/07. For immediate release.

Campaign group NO2ID [1] argue today that premier-in-waiting Gordon Brown should save the Exchequer billions of pounds in a time of tightened public spending by scrapping the abortive identity cards scheme.

But a national newspaper article today suggests that Mr Brown will back the identity cards scheme set in motion by his predecessor [2], despite speculation that he, as Chancellor, might have been convinced the project would be prohibitively expensive.

Simon Davies, an academic at the London School of Economics which produced a report highly critical of the government’s plans, was among those consulted by the ‘Identity management forum.’

Led by Sir James Crosby, it has been tasked by Gordon Brown to demonstrate the scheme’s benefits to the business world.

Simon Davies was quoted in press reports saying: “I think Gordon Brown wants to create clear blue water between himself as premier and Mr Blair on the ID programme, without scrapping it like the Tories want. The Crosby report will help him justify such a move.”

Guy Herbert, NO2ID General Secretary, said:

“John Major killed the poll tax. Mr Brown has a great opportunity to drop the whole misconceived plan for the government to ‘manage’ my identity and yours, before it has a chance to cripple his premiership. That would be a strong and wise decision.

“But if he makes only cosmetic changes or tries to sell it differently, just to avoid the temporary embarrassment of changing his mind to a position agreed upon by the opposition, the vast majority of political commentators and the public, he will look increasingly foolish as the authoritarian insanity of nationalising the people unravels.”

ENDS

Notes:
[1] – NO2ID is the non-partisan national campaign against ID cards and the database state. www.no2id.net

[2] – The Financial Times,
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/97d13348-0d80-11dc-937a-000b5df10621,dwp_uuid=34c8a8a6-2f7b-11da-8b51-00000e2511c8.html

10 May 2007

The Dobson report, the regular update to Parliament on the progress of the ID card scheme, was released today [1] – at the same time that Tony Blair
was announcing his resignation as Prime Minister. Privacy and civil liberty campaigners NO2ID [2] blasted Home Office figures which show an increase of
£640 million in the last 6 months while attempting to discount a further £510 million from future calculations [3].

Phil Booth, NO2ID’s National Coordinator said:

With each new analysis, the cost of the ID card scheme spirals. In effect, this report says that the total cost to British citizens has gone up by over
a billion pounds in six months. If they keep this up, the scheme will end up costing far more than even the LSE estimate.”

Brazenly claiming credit for work already done [4], and smoke and mirrors accounting shows not only contempt for Parliament but contempt for the
facts.

-ENDS-

Notes for editors:
1) http://www.identitycards.gov.uk/downloads/2007-05-10CostReport.pdf – the report, required every six months under section 37 of the Identity Cards Act
2006, is almost a month late and comes suspiciously close to the splitting of the Home Office and Tony Blair’s resignation announcement.

2) 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. NO2ID is affiliated to by the National Union of Journalists:

http://www.nuj.org.uk/inner.php?docid=1595

3) The headline figures given by the Home Office have always been costs to the Home Office alone. This report makes it clear that the National Identity
Scheme will incur significant costs elsewhere. It explicitly dumps £510 million in costs onto the Foreign Office, fails to quantify the additional
cost to the Department for Work and Pensions – whose Citizen Information Service database must now be upgraded to form a key part of the National
Identity Register – and excludes the cost of issuing ID Cards to potentially millions of people, e.g. “future costs of issuing ID Cards to other foreign
nationals such as visa holders coming to the UK for extended periods, non-EEA foreign nationals already settled in the UK and EEA nationals.” [p8]

The Home Office’s £640 million rise in six months represents an increase of 12%, which translated into the price of the card would mean the £93 passport
and ID card package now costing £105.

4) “Developments over the last six months” [p4] are nothing of the sort. ePassports were already fully implemented before the last Dobson report in
October 2006. The Public Affairs Committee was highly critical of some aspects of the ePassport programme, and the ID interrogations “scheduled for
May 2007” are already well over 6 months behind the original announced schedule.

1 May 2007

Privacy and civil liberty campaigners NO2ID [1] today welcomed the Information Commissioner’s evidence [2] to the Home Affairs Select Committee [3] but warned that the new powers he demanded would not prevent the escalation and spread of the surveillance culture that now permeates government.

Phil Booth, NO2ID’s National Coordinator said:

Whilst a stronger, better resourced Information Commissioner is clearly a good thing, more regulation is not the answer. As with all social ills, prevention is better than cure – and if we are to stop the surveillance society then the problem has to be stamped out at source.

In light of compulsory registration of personal information for ID cards, centralisation of medical records on the NHS ‘spine’, wholesale data-sharing within government and policies clearly designed to route around the Data Protection Act [4], awarding new powers to the Information Commissioner will be about as effective as a sticking plaster on a gaping wound.

-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. NO2ID is affiliated to by the National Union of Journalists:

http://www.nuj.org.uk/inner.php?docid=1595

2) “Information Commissioner calls for new privacy safeguards”, 1/5/07:

http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/pressreleases/2007/surveillance_society_follow_up001.pdf

3) The Home Affairs Committee’s inquiry, “A surveillance society?” begins today:

http://www.parliament.uk/parliamentary_committees/home_affairs_committee/hacpn070327no18.cfm

4) From NO2ID’s submission to the Home Affairs Committee:

10. The creation of a surveillance state is inherent in the strategic conception of ‘Transformational Government’, which is not simply an attempt to use new technology effectively, but is built around the idea of breaking boundaries between departmental functions by collecting and collating information on citizens across the whole of government. The Department of Constitutional Affairs’ ‘Information Sharing Vision Statement’ identifies the “barriers” to broad data sharing as human rights law, data protection, common law confidentiality, and the fundamental legal principle of ultra vires. NO2ID submits that if the culture of government is to regard those safeguards — which may yet be too weak — as problems, then something must be done about the culture of government.