ID Cards...

You may think that David Blunkett’s hundreds of new laws, harsh use of the Terrorism Act 2000, hard line on immigration, and proposed Civil Contingencies Bill are going to limit your freedom. David, however thinks that “Freedoms are not only embedded in our democracy, but in the very way we live our lives”. Maybe that’s why he is so keen on biometric ID cards that will “be a real benefit to individuals who want to establish their identity”. What ‘real benefit’ they will bring is not exactly certain. Blunkett claims the cards, which he calls ‘entitlement cards’ will “protect and increase our liberty”, and is pressing on with the scheme against massive opposition.

The cards will allegedly protect us from ‘illegal immigrants’ and ‘terrorists’. But how they would protect us from Al Qaeda members travelling on legitimate foreign passports is unclear. Biometric cards wouldn’t have prevented 9/11 or the Madrid bombing either. Dave’s a bit doubtful too, telling parliament “I accept that it is important that we do not pretend that an entitlement card would be an overwhelming factor in combating international terrorism”. So why do we need them then?

What is sure is that the cards will cost YOU a lot of money, £3.1 billion, or about 51 pounds for every man woman and child, according to the Home Office. Last March a leaked government report said that more than £1.5 billion in taxpayers’ money has been wasted on other botched IT schemes over the last six years! Hopefully the cost of all the equipment needed to read the hi-tech cards, recognise iris scans and fingerprints has been taken into account by the corporations brought in to manage the scheme. Going by the Home Office’s record on large public projects though, the figure will rise significantly as interested companies always brag that they can sort the contract out for a lot less than it ends up costing.

The implementation and running of the system is likely to be taken up by Schlumberger Sema, a company which is already conducting trials with the Passport Agency to produce biometric ID cards. Schlumberger, who have been bought by Atos Origin, say that their “best of breed solutions can help your company achieve a smart and robust level of security.” Sounds great.

Schlumberger have a history of ever-so-slightly-less-than-popular schemes, extracting tax payers money to make a quick buck and at someone elses expense. Under the government’s ‘Benefit Integrity Project’ people receiving benefits because of illness or disability were asked to prove they couldn’t work. Usually it takes around an hour for a doctor to check someone’s illness or disability. But Sema, who were often paid by the visit, managed to rattle off check ups within a matter of minutes. As a result thousands of people lost their benefits. The government eventually scrapped the programme due to “a serious error of judgement”.

The company does have some experience in the spying game though. Sema’s got the benefit of John Deutch, disgraced former Director of the CIA, on its board. Deutch has a bit of a murky track record in the Pentagon too, helping to oversee the US invasions of El Salvador, Nicaragua and Grenada, which led to thousands of deaths during the 1980s. His experience with data secruity’s not too hot either. He was dismissed from the CIA for keeping 17,000 pages of, according to the CIA, “enormously sensitive material at the highest levels of classification,” on his home computer which was also used by his children for school work and surfing the net.

Read more

Also see this...
Everything you never wanted to know about the UK ID card