Preparation for ID cards goes ahead without parliament
The Guardian reports:
Ministers are to press ahead with the mandatory fingerprinting of new passport applicants using royal prerogative powers to sidestep the loss of their identity card legislation last week.
As Caoilfhionn Gallagher, policy officer of Liberty, said:
“If the government cannot convince parliament or the public of the need for a multi-purpose ID card it is wrong to create a national biometric database by stealth without proper debate.”
The Register comments:
David Blunkett’s Home Office peddled the fiction that international biometric passport requirements meant that most of the expense of the ID card scheme would have to be undertaken anyway, thus making the ID card itself a fairly small additional hurdle to cross. Neither of these claims is true. ICAO only requires a facial biometric on the passport (in mere mortalspeak, a digitised version of a normal passport photo is all we’re talking about here). The EU intends to require fingerprints in addition to digitised mugshot, but because of its Schengen opt-out the UK isn’t obliged to follow suit. So nobody’s forcing us to have fingerprints on passports, and parliament has not yet approved any ID scheme that the fingerprints to be collected would be used for.
April 13th, 2005 at 09:27
Fingerprint Duplication Archive
The Fingerprint Duplication Archive is no longer
taking new members. The Trustees of the archive have agreed that the
dissemination of fingerprint duplication information is more appropriate than the creation of a centralised archive; and have produced a ‘How to Duplicate your Fingerprints’ Information Sheet at
rupture.co.uk/fda/infosheet1/infosheet1.pdf.
For those who have already contributed to the archive the service will
continue as usual.
Thanks for your ongoing support of this project,
The Fingerprint Duplication Archive
April 13th, 2005 at 16:19
as everybody knows, blair will get his own way, even if he has to lie and cheat,whats next rigged elections, oh sorry labours already done that, conviction is proof. the simple way round it, dont buy a passport, boycott the new offices, or vote them out, its your choice.
April 13th, 2005 at 18:07
Please vote against labour. Anybody at all. Just not him. Have mercy on the rest of us.
April 13th, 2005 at 19:21
Bliar is a problem. The system of governance must be changed.
April 13th, 2005 at 21:48
ID Cards and Stealth
I heard on the radio today (in the car, so I don’t have exact quote) that the decision to include fingerprint details in passports was not ‘ID cards by stealth’, and in fact the passports have nothing to do with…
July 2nd, 2005 at 14:26
The reasons behind the proposed ID card and National Identity Register are two-fold. As we now have the technology to record personal information and physical traits on hard discs and chips respectively, we effectively have a solution looking for an application (Economist, 2- July 2005, p. 12). And of course being able to acquire and store such large quantities of information gives the state more power over the citizen – knowledge is, after all, power. So in the end we are going to be lumped with with a system and a country where the government is able to keep far closer tabs on the citizen than is legitimate and where the citizen is answerable to the state, not the other way round, as is usual in any country that is pleased to call itself a democracy.
March 29th, 2007 at 17:40
The FDA is corrupt. Look at all the money they spend on campaigns to rush things through. They own the presidency and most of the congress and senate WBR LeoP