UK ID Cards - for or against?

[iranu]

But Rave is presuming that the system will be so bad that it will take 4 weeks for a new card. It might not...

ROFLMFAO - have you ever dealt with a government organisation? Are you aware that every IT project this government has introduced has gone way, way over budget and does not work as intended?

I have a real issue with people who say they have nothing to hide. They don't understand that it's not a question of having nothing to hide but fearing what will be done with the data.

Ever watched the film Gattaca? Do you know what an "invalid" is? Who is to say that the information given, particularly DNA, is not going to be used against you.

I can well imagine unscrupulous racist bastards who have access to the database discriminating against those with say Jewish DNA.

Perhaps in the future your DNA will be analysed and you will be refused medical care because you are more suseptable to a certain condition. Maybe you will be monitored or required to check in with the police every week because you have an extra 5% chance of developing schizophrenia.

We do not know what the future will hold as far as governments are concerned. Identity cards with biometric data are another slice off the cucumber of freedom, another step down the road to totalitarianism, another box ticked on the check list for control of you.

I wonder whether our grand children will be happy living in a state that knows more about them than they do with the knowledge that their grandfathers and grandmothers had nothing to hide and nothing to fear.

[RVF500]

That's the crux of it. Not whether we have anything to hide but what the govt do with the data once they get their sticky mitts on it. Anyone who knows about govts will know that politicians cannot resist the urge to meddle with things. They feel the need to leave their mark in history. Just wait til some muppet thinks he can 'make the world a better place' after a few reruns of minority report.

Give them the power and they will want to exercise it.

An example of "efficient" govt. I was rebated NI employers payments for a year that I spent out of the country. I also claimed for emplyees as well. The two go hand in hand n my case. The first paid up pretty much staight away. The second department, despite being physically next door, took a further 3 years of repeatedly asking me the same questions about my locations before they finally paid up.

Imagine the same level of service over something regarding your ID. And don't tell me it would never happen. I think you will find i happening all too often.

[nichomach]

For all those people who keep parrotting that if you're innocent you have nothing to fear from the police, have a gander at this story:
Blackpool Today
Basically a policeman attempting to intimidate someone into accepting a criminal record for a crime that he didn't commit solely because his prints were on record after questioning for another crime of which he was innocent. Now imagine the scope for that sort of idiocy and intimidation when EVERYONE'S prints are on file. "His prints were there, he must have done it...case over".