The National Identity Register (you'll often see this reduced to NIR) is a giant database used to hold information about people registered on the Identity scheme.
The Identity Cards Bill proposes to hold 51 different sorts of information on each individual, this ranges from name, address and date of birth to a record of all the occasions on which your record has been accessed and by whom. The Bill leaves open the possibility of extending this list in the future through less scrutinised secondary legislation.
The Home Office officially states that under the Data Protection Act 1998 an individual will be able to see the NIR information held on him/her subject to the procedures laid out in the legislation.
The Identity Cards Bill would grant the Home Secretary the power to change information held on an individual on the NIR if he believes it to be ‘incorrect or inaccurate’ without the consent of or informing the individual concerned.
The audit trail is the record kept, by decree of the Identity Cards Bill, of every occasion on which an individual’s entry on the NIR is accessed, for what reason and to whom the information has been passed.
The NO2ID Campaign
Box 412
19-21 Crawford Street
London W1H 1PJ
enquiries@no2id.net
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7340 6077
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