ID Cards - The Sham U Turn
Taking kids to the pool? Sorry, you need a card
The Government is still pressing ahead with the national identity register, to which will be added the details of everyone who applies for a passport. Anyone on the register will be obliged subsequently to inform the authorities of a change of address, under pain of a £1,000 fine. In other words, if you don’t want to carry a card, that’s your choice. But we are still going to take your fingerprints, and if you don’t have a card we can march you down to the station to have you checked.
If there was ever a solution in search of a problem, it is ID cards and the identity register. You know what will happen: the authorities will spend thousands of hours pursuing forgetful, peripatetic students. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda sleepers diligently settling down to lives as teaching assistants as they prepare suicide attacks will be careful to conform to all pettifogging bureaucracy. Like the Tube bombers before them, it isn’t their identities they wish to conceal, only their ambitions.
ID cards voluntary? Don’t you believe it