National ID cards - your chance to respond
Privacy International, Leafnet and others are running a campaign informing people about the UK national identity card scheme and encouraging them to respond to the government's consultation. At present the Home Office is claiming that there is an overwhelming public response in favour of these ID cards, which I find difficult to believe - although I suspect only the relatively well-heeled have the resources, time and inclination to download the Home Office's unnecessarily large - 13MB - consultation document.

As someone who lived and worked in southern Europe for many years - former dictatorships seems to be particularly prone to having such schemes - and having amassed an entire boxful of other people's national ID cards without any effort whatsoever (merely moving house a few times) I have to say that ID card schemes are of little benefit in guaranteeing identity. They merely indicate that a person has been sent or given an ID card or has stolen one, not that the holder is the person stated. But these cards can prove very problematic for the individual whose ID is stolen by others, which happens all too frequently: officials tend to believe whatever the paperwork says rather than reality, with the consequence that the cards give a false sense of security to the authorities (remember, all this goes back to events of 11 Sept). Such cards are also a major driver for street crime.

And this apart from the privacy issues involved. When you get to a situation where you can't make a tax enquiry without providing your national ID number to the civil servant concerned - the situation in a number of 'modern democracies' with such schemes - then privacy is out of the door and wholesale paranoia sets in.

Check out the Privacy International website for more information and an excellent set of links. If you want to distribute leaflets take a look at Leafnet, print out some leaflets and distribute them in your neighbourhood. To submit a superfast online response, check out Stand, which has an automatic response generator for the time challenged. The deadline for responses to the consultation is now 31 January 2003.

Update: Simon Davies of the LSE has just informed me that Privacy International has set up two local rate numbers: in favour of the ID Card: 0845 330 7245, against the ID Card: 0845 330 7246. "Each message left on these lines will be converted to an audio file, and then emailed to the Home Office. The government has confirmed that these will be regarded as legitimate consultation responses."