Ministers plan to sell your ID card details to raise cash
By Francis Elliott, Andy McSmith and Sophie Goodchild

26 June 2005

Personal details of all 44 million adults living in Britain could be
sold to private companies as part of government attempts to arrest
spiralling costs for the new national identity card scheme, set to 
get the go-ahead this week.

The Independent on Sunday can today reveal that ministers have opened
talks with private firms to pass on personal details of UK citizens
for an initial cost of [UKP] 750 each.

Amid warnings today that the cost of a card for each adult in Britain
is likely to double to [UKP] 200, union leaders predicted that millions 
of public-sector workers could refuse to co-operate with the scheme,
prompting claims that the ID scheme will become Labour's equivalent 
of the poll tax.

(snip / snip)

Full article at "The Independent" ...
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=649780

Cheers, Steve...

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