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There are a lot of reasons why it's bad, from the philosophical to the practical, at all stages in the process.
Philosophical: it essentially means you always have to prove your identity, even when you're not doing anything to warrant government attention--driving, voting, being arrested for a crime, for example. The hand of the law is permanently on your shoulder, which flies in the face of (Anglo-American, anyway) civic tradition.
In the U.S., a national ID card is still difficult to sell politically, even after the attacks and with the nosiest cabinet since Nixon. Resident aliens in pretty much all countries have to carry them (I'm a US citizen living in Amsterdam, so I have one), but not citizens in the freer ones.
As a practical matter, building a national ID apparatus should require extra care, but it'll be farmed out to the private company that puts in the lowest bid. There'll be a lot of vague mumbling about "safeguards" but nothing concrete. Since it's the Blair government, they'd probably sell your data to telemarketers and spin it as some kind of "public/private partnership."
Spread all the FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) you can about this, but stress practical, everyday problems; don't cry Big Brother, because he's already here and people are used to him by now.
And in a few years we'll have this debate again, over requiring everybody to have subcutaneous transponders. At their own expense. |
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