Blair faces rebellion over ID card 'disaster'

[theearthisround]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1672294,00.html

A senior Labour insider warned the Government today that ID cards had the "disaster potential" of Margaret Thatcher's poll tax and the Millennium Dome combined, as Tony Blair faced the first test of his slimmed-down Commons majority.

-------
Mr Blair was dealt a double blow on the eve of the vote over the cost and extent of the plan. The Information Commissioner gave warning that introducing the biometric cards could turn the UK into a "surveillance society" and academics at the London School of Economics (LSE) claimed that the new cards could cost between £170 to £300 each.

-------
Mr Clarke also dismissed objections that the card would infringe civil liberties. He said: “They will allow people to identify themselves and ensure that the data that is held about them is data held about them and not someone else. In that sense, they are a means of attacking the ... Big Brother society."

-------
She added: "In the Government’s own pilot studies, one out of five people were not identified from their fingerprints - that’s over ten million people. Four million people wouldn’t be identified if you relied on iris recognition. The foundation for the scheme simply isn’t there in scientific terms alone, even before you go on to the civil liberties and costs.

(more)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1672294,00.html



1984 by George Orwell

And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed - if all records told the same tale -- then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan,
'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.' And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. 'Reality control', they called it: in New speak, 'doublethink.'
'Stand easy!' barked the instructress, a little more genially.
Winston sank his arms to his sides and slowly refilled his lungs with air. His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink.

[bennywhale]

1. Charles Clark said that textbook example of politico "double speak"

with an entirely straight face.

The dishonour is astonishing.

Do you think these types of people really entered politics for this?

Or as always has power corrupted them absolutely

[rocktivity]

2. 170 to 300 British pounds? That averages out to 430 dollars in REAL money!

And who's supposed to pay for these cards?

rocknation
:wow:

[D-Notice]

3. The UK public!

Gordon Brown (Chancellor of the Exchequer - the guy in charge of tax money) said that he won't allow tax money to be used to pay towards the cost. So it's either we pay all the cost of the system, or the different govt depts have to cut their spending in other areas.

Can't wait to see the effect this'll have on the NHS! ;-)

[Nihil]

4. Yep ... and that's per person ...

Puts a nice dent in the budget of a family of five doesn't it?

They also haven't said how often they need to be renewed.