By a narrow margin, our House of Commons has approved the UK Governments' plans to introduce ID cards. There is much debate in the UK as to whether these cards will benefit anyone, particularly as the reasons our Government give for introducing them are not valid. It appears to be a cover for an attempt to set up a national biometric database; does anyone here have any views on the benefits/ validity of ID cards, bearing in mind we already have several ways of formally identifying ourselves in the UK?

I don't know how much damage a national ID card will do to personal freedom and liberty, but you can be sure it won't do anything to increase it!

My main concern is the lack of awareness our government has regarding IT security. It tends to sub-contract to IT firms, who have repeatedly cocked-up Social Security systems in the past few years, resulting in lost data, delays in claims etc, all at huge cost to the taxpayer. Plus there is also the possibility the info could be misused, either by the government or by a third party.

http://www.spofga.org/build/2005/may/images/ID_card_gothic.jpg

It's not going to get through the Lords, though.  It'll be interesting to see how the government waters things down to try and make things acceptable.

But the trials were a joke when you consider what they're trying to do, and they're basically crossing their fingers and hoping that the technology moves on enough over the next few years to get them out of the hole they're currently digging for themselves.

Call me jaded, cynical and maybe a bit jealous 'cause I ain't going to be getting any money out of this project, but I know many times more about biometrics and ID cards than any of the companies involved so far... as things stand, it ain't going to have even a fraction of a chance of doing the things that the government say it's going to do.  Only a few billion of our money thrown away... sigh.