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

10 October 2007

Today’s report of the Public Accounts Committee [1] asked for an explanation from the Home Office why the planned Identity Card was necessary at all.

“The Home Office needs to explain the underlying rationale as to why citizens need an identity card as well as an ePassport, particularly as the
ePassport offers broader utility in terms of global travel,” said the report.

Civil liberties and privacy campaign NO2ID predicts an answer is unlikely to be forthcoming.

Phil Booth, NO2ID’s National Coordinator, said:

Citizens don’t need a government identity card. There’s no benefit whatsoever to the individual; which is why it is being tied to the passport[3], a useful document people really do want. What the Home Office will never say is that its precious ID database is solely for the convenience of officials who want to know more about you. All it can do to obscure that fact is flannel.

-ENDS-

Notes for editors:
1) Report: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmselect/cmpubacc/362/362.pdf
Press: “MPs ask “why have ePassports and identity cards?” http://uk.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUKL0926642120071009
‘Edward Leigh MP chairman of the committee said “The Home Office needs to explain why an ePassport could not serve both purposes. At the very least, the Identity and Passport Service should reduce areas of overlap as the identity card project progresses and make sure that the combined fee for the two documents is minimised.”’

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.

3) The government has repeatedly claimed that changes to the passport are due to ‘international obligation’ and that ‘70% of the costs of the ID
scheme’ would therefore have to be spent anyway. These claims are completely untrue. UK passports are already ICAO-compliant, and continue to qualify
for the US Visa Waiver scheme, and the UK – having exercised its veto – is not bound by the EU Schengen agreement on travel documents which would, in
any case, involve taking only two fingerprints, and require no central Register or individual interrogation.
(See. http://www.RenewForFreedom.org ) The National Audit Office reports that the total cost of the recent passport ‘upgrade’ was just £61 million,
compared to the £540 million that the Home Office says it will spend each year on passports and ID cards combined in just the first ten years of the
programme.