This time it's the Home Affairs Select Committee, chaired by Labour MP Keith Vaz, and they are expressing unease about the potential for the ID Cards Scheme to damage privacy, undermine public trust, and lead to a surveillance society. They also draw attention to the danger of any ambiguity about what the scheme is for. Here's an interesting quotation:
"The Committee, which considers whether draft laws will have
unexpected or ill-advised consequences for the constitution, warns that
the Identity Cards Bill seeks to create a database that will record
more information about every adult in the UK than has ever been placed
on a single database before.
Such is the significance of the database to the Government proposals
that the Committee suggests that the Bill should more properly be known
as the “National Identity Register and Identity Cards Bill”.
“Such a scheme may have the benefits that are claimed for it, but
the existence of this extensive new database in the hands of the State
makes abuse of privacy possible,” says the report."
Mainly, it's interesting because it's from this Register article...from March 2005, quoting the House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution. And here's one from silicon.com (July 2004), citing the Home Affairs Select Committee's concerns that the ID Card plans were too fuzzy, with a risk of function creep and loss of trust over possible hidden purposes.
I know both Jacqui Smith and Meg Hillier have taken steps to 're-launch' the ID Cards scheme, with new communication and implications of some reduction in scope - but if a cross-party committee of MPs is still raising the same kinds of objection as 3 and 4 years ago, doesn't that suggest that a more radical policy revision is called for?
![[RSS Newsfeed]](/themes/sotto/images/valid-rss.png)
![[This is a Roller site]](/themes/sotto/images/roller-logo.gif){kind=logo}