'Chip and PIN' with ID cards? Oh that'll be great for my aunt who's in
her 90s.

How soon before they say that certain individuals will require their PIN
to be implanted in microchip form?

From:

<http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1734265,00.html>

***BEGIN ARTICLE***

This ID project is even more sinister than we first thought 

The insidious erosion of our civil liberties will accelerate
dramatically if the government wins the battle over identity cards 

Henry Porter
Sunday March 19, 2006
The Observer 


You may have noticed the vaguely menacing tone of recent government
advertising campaigns. Here is a current example: 'If you know a
business that isn't registered for tax, call the Revenue or HM Customs -
no names needed.' Another says: 'Technology has made it easier to
identify benefit cheats.'
Whether the campaign is about rape, TV licences or filling in your tax
form, there is always a we-know-where-you-live edge to the message, a
sense that this government is dividing the nation into suspects and
informers.

Reading the Identity Cards Bill, as it pinged between the House of
Commons and the Lords last week, I wondered about the type of campaign
that will be used to persuade us to comply with the new ID card law.
Clearly, it would be orchestrated by some efficient martinet like the
Minister of State at the Home Office, Hazel Blears. Her task will be to
put the fear of God into the public at the same time as reassuring us
that the £90 cost of each card will protect everyone from identity
theft, terrorism and benefit fraud.

The ads might imagine any number of scenarios. Here is one. 'Your
elderly mother has fallen ill,' starts the commentary gravely. 'You
travel from your home to look after her. She has a chronic condition but
this time, it's a bit of a crisis and you need to pick up a prescription
at the only late-night chemist in town. Trouble is, she has mislaid her
identity card and you never thought to get one. Under the new law, the
pharmacist will not be able to give you that medicine without proper ID.
So, get your card. It's for your own good - and Mum's.'

It became clear last week that the government will do anything to get
this bill through parliament, including ignoring its own manifesto
pledge to make the cards voluntary, a fact that we should remember as
each of us entrusts the 49 separate pieces of personal information to a
national database. By the end of last year, the government had already
spent £32m of taxpayers' money on the scheme and, at the present, the
expenditure is edging towards £100,000 a day. No surprise that Home
Secretary Charles Clarke dissembles about Labour promises.

Labour's manifesto said: 'We will introduce ID cards, including
biometric data like fingerprints, backed up by a national register and
rolling out initially on a voluntary basis as people renew their
passports.'

It turns out that there is nothing voluntary about it. If you renew your
passport, you will be compelled to provide all the information the state
requires for its sinister data base. The Home Secretary says that the
decision to apply for, or renew, a passport is entirely a matter of
individual choice; thus he maintains that the decision to commit those
personal details to the data base is a matter of individual choice.

George Orwell would have been pleased to have invented that particular
gem. Yet this is not fiction, but the reality of 2006, and we should
understand that if the Home Secretary is prepared to mislead on the
fundamental issue as to whether something is voluntary or compulsory, we
cannot possibly trust his word on the larger issues of personal freedom
and the eventual use of the ID card database.

Clarke has now established himself as a deceiver, even in the eyes of
his party. Labour democrats such as Kate Hoey, Diane Abbott, Bob
Marshall-Andrews and Mark Fisher all understood that the Lords'
amendments of last week simply sought to underline this concept of a
voluntary scheme, which complied with the 2005 manifesto. Oddly enough,
the compulsory provision of personal information to the government
database is not the greatest threat to our freedom, though it is in
itself a substantial one. The real menace comes when the ID card scheme
begins to track everyone's movements and transactions, the details of
which will kept on the database for as long as the Home Office desires.

Over the past few weeks, an anonymous email has been doing a very good
job of enlightening people on how invasive the ID card will be. 'Private
businesses,' says the writer, 'are going to be given access to the
national identity register database. If you want to apply for a job, you
will have to present your card for a swipe. If you want to apply for a
London underground Oystercard or supermarket loyalty card or driving
licence, you will have to present your card.'

You will need the card when you receive prescription drugs, when you
withdraw a relatively small amount of money from a bank, check into
hospital, get your car unclamped, apply for a fishing licence, buy a
round of drinks (if you need to prove you're over 18), set up an
internet account, fix a residents' parking permit or take out insurance.

Every time that card is swiped, the central database logs the
transaction so that an accurate plot of your life is drawn. The state
will know everything that it needs to know; so will big corporations,
the police, the Inland Revenue, HM Customs, MI5 and any damned official
or commercial busybody that wants access to your life. The government
and Home Office have presented this as an incidental benefit, but it is
at the heart of their purpose.

Last week, Andrew Burnham, a junior minister at the Home Office,
confirmed the anonymous email by admitting that the ID card scheme would
now include chip-and-pin technology because it would be a cheaper way of
checking each person's identity. The sophisticated technology on which
this bill was sold will cost too much to operate, with millions of
checks being made every week.

That is a very important admission because the government still
maintains the fiction that the ID card is defence against identity theft
and terrorism. The 7 July bombers would not have been deterred by a
piece of plastic. And it is clear that the claim about protecting your
identity is also rubbish because chip-and-pin technology has already
been compromised by organised criminals. What remains is the ceaseless
monitoring of people's lives. That is what the government is forcing on
us.

Practically every week in these columns, I urge you to pay attention to
the government's theft of our liberties. I would feel a bore and an
obsessive if I hadn't pored over the ID card bill last week and read
Hansard's account of the exchanges in both houses. One of the most
chilling passages in the bill is section 13 which deals with the
'invalidity and surrender' of ID cards, which, in effect, describes the
withdrawal of a person's identity by the state. For, without this card,
it will be almost impossible to function, to exist as a citizen in the
UK. Despite the cost to you, this card will not be your property.

People keep asking me what they can do about the lurch into Labour's
velvet tyranny and I keep replying that the only way for us is to re-
engage with the politics of our country. But it is difficult. The new
Conservative regime under David Cameron has not yet found the voice to
articulate the objection to the radical changes proposed in our society.
Edward Garnier, the Tory spokesman on ID cards, did his best in the
Commons last week, but we need to hear his leader express the principled
outrage that comes from conviction and unyielding values. If we don't,
we may justifiably wonder if the Conservatives are sitting on their
hands in the belief that they will eventually inherit Labour's apparatus
of control.

Outside parliament, what needs to happen is the formation of the
broadest possible front against these changes, a movement which deploys
the most principled democratic minds in the country to argue with the
lazy and stupid view that if you've got nothing to hide, you have
nothing to fear from Labour's attack on liberty. I believe that will
happen.

***END ARTICLE***

-- 
banana     "The thing I hate about you, Rowntree, is the way you
            give Coca-Cola to your scum, and your best teddy-bear to
            Oxfam, and expect us to lick your frigid fingers for the
            rest of your frigid life." (Mick Travis, 'If...', 1968)