Damian Hinds is prospective parliamentary candidate for East Hampshire.
Credit where it’s due. The Labour spin machine has scored a rare double hit. With the first they persuade the media they’ve had a change of heart on compulsory National Identity Cards, thereby neutralising an awkward issue. With the second, they quietly speed up the introduction of the National Identity Register, thereby furthering the real underlying aim.
As the Guardian reports, over 80% of people will find their way onto the National Identity Register as a result of applying for or renewing a passport (and will thereafter have a duty to notify the Register of changes in personal details or face a fine of up to £1,000). Additionally, young people turning 18 are likely to find increasingly that a ‘voluntary’ ID Card is pretty much compulsory if they ever want to buy a drink, so they’ll get on the Register too. At some point in the future when, say, 90% of people are on the Register, a government could easily decide that they now “might as well”, in the interests of efficiency, make the thing universal and compulsory.
The key debate is not, and never has been, about a plastic card. It is about the National Identity Register (NIR) that sits behind the card. The NIR is the daddy of all databases, which will allow (via everyone’s unique Identity Registration Number – in database parlance, the ‘index key’) the linking together of data held on us across the other 40+ public sector databases, existing, under construction, or planned.
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