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The UK Gulag: ID cards plan within 10 years
(BBC News, 26 November 2003)
Measures to create a national identity card system have been announced in the Queen's Speech. . . . Legislation will create a national register and powers for compulsory cards. . . . Passports and driving licences will include fingerprints within five years. . . . The measures made it into the speech after Home Secretary David Blunkett scraped through a Cabinet battled to keep the plan on the table. . . . Under the scheme, the government aims to create an identity system which it believes will tackle illegal working and immigration, disrupt organised crime and terrorism and prevent abuse of public services and benefits. . . . At the heart of the system will be a central database which holds data on every legal resident of the UK. . . . New laws will allow law enforcement agencies and other public bodies such as the NHS to use the system to check the identity of a person. . . . These new cards would be based on a system recording 'biometric' data such as fingerprints or a scan of the iris - something the government believes would be impossible to forge. . . . But the two most controversial elements of the scheme are how it would be used by public services and the issue of compulsion. . . . Under the draft bill, ministers will have powers to change the system to prevent people using specific public services if they do not produce a valid ID card. . . . Secondly, ministers will have the power to set a future date when the carrying or production of ID cards would become compulsory.

posted by Lorenzo 5:04 PM