An Orwellian Future

So, the election over and done with, the government has got back to the business in hand, which in this particular case is ID cards. Now as a general idea the concept of ID cards doesn’t particularly bother me, but the the proposal in this bill, and the way its portrayed most certainly does. It seems rather unlikely it’ll do anything significant to combat terrorism or organized crime, since they’ll either just not bother with using ID cards at all, or more likely just counterfeit cards from Joe Public. Of course since this is intended to be the ‘authoratative’ ID source, Joe Public will have that much harder a time with this identity theft. Oh, ordinary citizens will not be compelled to use ID cards anyway

Q. What if I simply refused to use the card?

A. From Mr Blunket… You will not be required to use a card unless you wish to work, use the banking or health system, travel or receive benefits.

Hmm, so basically it may not be compulsory, but unless you are in fact a terrorist, there’s no way you’ll be able to live practically without one. Government-0, Terrorists-1, Civil Liberties-0. Read the FAQ for all the details, and just be thankful for the government track record (incompetance) at succesfully implementing these kind of large scale IT projects.