Posted by racingsnake
@ 11:52 PM GMT+00:00
06 Nov · Mon 2006
'Nuff said...
I can't improve on Hubert's post; we've just released the source of Federation Manager. Over to you......
'Modernity or Civil Liberties'? You choose.
Mr Blair addressed the topic of Identity Cards in his most recent monthly press briefing, noting that the project is "on budget and on schedule" - presumably on the basis of the first six-monthly report to which last March's legislation committed the Home Office.
If I calculate it correctly, that report was a month late (a slippage of 16% against the due date).
It also aroused a certain amount of controversy, notably from Prof Ian Angell of the LSE, some of whose comments are quoted here.
Even the BBC's brief excerpts from Mr Blair's briefing seem to me to reveal some of the unresolved confusion at the heart of the policy. For instance, Br Blair is quoted as saying that all non-EU nationals will need to carry a UK ID card from 2008 if they are to work in the UK or access public services. I wonder if that means that a non-EU national who is hit by a bus in the UK will simply not be treated if they cannot produce their ID card?
It also highlights (again) one of the unacknowledged issues with the scheme, which is that the UK government cannot compel other EU nationals to carry a UK identity card - so we will be placed in a situation where UK nationals and non-EU nationals have to be registered, but citizens of our closest neighbouring countries will not.
Mr Blair is also quoted as saying: that the National Identity Register will "help improve protection for the vulnerable, enabling more effective and quicker checks on those seeking to work". I'm not sure I follow the argument there; it appears to run "some members of our society are vulnerable; therefore we need quick and effective checks on those seeking to work..." (provided, of course, that they do not come from an EU state).
Yes, CRB (Criminal Records Bureau) checks are intended as a safeguard against, say, people with a history of child molestation from getting work as primary school teachers... but to imply that a National Identity Register will fix that problem is stretching things a bit far. We have repeatedly been assured that the NIR itself will not contain this kind of data - so successful protection depends on reliable access to accurate information elsewhere, whether or not the subject can be obliged to hold a UK ID Card.
The BBC article led (rightly, in my view) with the classic 'false opposition' Mr Blair deployed as part of his case. Apparently, although ID Cards are often portrayed as raising a civil liberties issue, they are actually more an issue of 'modernity'.
Well that's settled, then. I'd far rather be modern than have civil liberties, any day.
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