Big Brother Britain?

The Blair Administration's proposal for biometric ID cards looked 
like a goner -- until the July 7 attacks. But critics still worry 
about their intrusiveness

Until recently, the British government's ambitious plans to introduce
biometric identity cards looked dead in the water. After all, previous
attempts to launch ID cards, most recently in 2003, collapsed in the
face of public and political opposition to a system deemed
unnecessarily intrusive and potentially costly. A June 28 survey by
polling outfit YouGov showed support for ID cards had fallen to 45%,
from 78% two years ago.

But then came the July 7 bombings of London's transportation system,
which killed more than 50 people, and a failed similar attack two
weeks later. Now the government is banking on a change in public
opinion about the biometric cards, which are a central plank of the
Labour government's counterterrorism plans. Prime Minister Tony Blair
calls the cards an "idea whose time has come."

If Blair gets his way, Britain, which hasn't issued ID cards since
Winston Churchill abolished the practice in 1952, will have the most
detailed, centralized biometric database in the world by 2008. The new
cards would contain personal details such as name, gender, place and
date of birth, current and previous addresses, and immigration status,
as well as a microchip with a digital photograph, fingerprints, and
iris scans. Phased in gradually from 2008 onward, the voluntary ID
cards aren't expected to become compulsory before 2013 -- and then
only if Parliament agrees.

[...]

The LSE report also found that no other government in the world had
proposed an identity card with such a vast amount of electronic
information. Under Labour's plan, the cards would include a record 
of every address where an individual has lived both in Britain and
abroad, and a record of every time the card is used, whether at 
the border, to claim benefits, or access health-care records.

"ELECTRONIC DIARY."  "The government's goal is to create an audit
trail of an individual's movements, a sort of electronic diary for
every individual in Britain," says Simon Davies, director of Privacy
International, a London-based human-rights group and one of the
authors of the LSE report. "The trend emerging within Britain is one
of universal and ubiquitous surveillance."

Even British Information Commissioner Richard Thomas, appointed by the
government to report to Parliament on privacy issues, calls the ID
card database excessive and warns that the country risks "sleepwalking
into a surveillance society."

The big worry in Britain is that an extensive amount of personal
information will be available on one massive centralized database.
"The creation of this detailed data trail of individuals' activities
is particularly worrying," says Thomas. "It cannot be viewed in
isolation of other initiatives, which serve to build a detailed
picture of people's lives, such as CCTV surveillance, automatic 
number-plate recognition recording vehicle movements for law enforcement 
and congestion charging, and the proposals to introduce satellite tracking
of vehicles for road-use charging."

[...]

There's no doubt that Labour's plan still has its critics, who worry
about potential abuse of the ID card system. But with public fear
about terrorism rising in the aftermath of the attacks, the government
reckons that Britons will come to see ID cards differently.

Capell is a senior correspondent for BusinessWeek in London
Edited by Patricia O'Connell

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Full article at Raiders News Updates...
http://www.raidersnewsupdate.com/lead-story57.htm

Cheers, Steve..

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