A serious argument against ID cards
Monday, March 10, 2008 Information released last week revealed that at least 1,052 laptops have been lost or stolen from UK government departments since 2001, including 200 in the past year alone. (Story HERE.)
Writing on The Free Society blog today, Eamonn Butler highlights some of the data that has gone missing. Some of the stories are so bizarre you have to laugh, but I suspect they're only funny if you're not directly involved. How would you feel if your passport, National Insurance and bank details (or NHS records) fell into the hands of the "wrong" people?
Quite what effect this will have on the Government's ID scheme remains to be seen. As Eamonn concludes: "The defining argument against the government’s ID database proposals is the demonstrated inability of civil servants to safeguard even the information that they have on us right now."
Full article HERE.
Reader Comments (3)
This is shocking but no surprise, Simon. No ineptitude this government demonstrates now surprises me at all. In addition, and what is truly puzzling is why it persists with another scheme that is doomed to failure.
But then, this government is a complete failure for it has now failed with the economy and in no uncertain terms. Moreover, the blame for this failure cannot simply be shifted to the situation in America as the whole approach to economics adopted by the government is poor. You cannot solve all the problems in the world by throwing money at them, producing more and more regulations and by soaking up so much of the workforce by paying it from the pubic purse. Add to that the legion of quangos and all the countless fripperies Nu-Labour deems desirable and the recipe has been set for some horrendous months to come.
As Nancy Cameron and the ninnies on the Tory front bench don't have the nous to do it, then may I now call for a vote of no confidence in this government.
Hi Blad
I will definitely second a vote of no confidence in this government. Then again, I don't really have any confidence in the other 2 major options either!
We really need to get behind UKIP I think, if we wish to see any of our freedoms that have been eroded, restored, as well as some common sense.
Did you hear on the news this morning that Gordon Brown called an emergency meeting overnight to discuss the expected bad weather? What did he expect to do, succeed where Canute failed? He would have been better off getting some sleep so that he was more fit and able to at least try and resolve the problems caused. There was no way the storm was going to be diverted by any government meeting - the government basically just needed to be there to pick up the pieces, which were a great unknown until the storm had been and gone!
Pity they can't be that proactive about other things they might be able to do something about!
With the modern technology the criminals use today as soon as the first ID cards are introduced they will of mastered the perfect copies with in the first week,