LifeSiteNews
Posted [1] : 2007-08-15 04:32:35

LONDON, August 14, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The United Kingdom is now selecting companies to develop a compulsory multi-billion pound national identity card programme to complement the massive surveillance system monitoring the movements of British subjects.

The Labour government called the £5.7 billion ID programme "another milestone" in the fight against terrorism, organised crime, and illegal immigration, while opposition parties and civil liberties groups argue the programme smacks of the police state and is another milestone in eroding the freedoms and the privacy once enjoyed by Britons.

Under this scheme Britons would be compelled to take up biometric national ID cards containing all ten fingerprints, which at some later date would also incorporate iris and face-recognition technology. Starting in 2009, all Britons applying for passports or renewing their passports would also have to apply for the ID cards. Britons have not had mandatory national ID cards since World War II, when the island kingdom was in a national crisis fighting for its survival against Nazi Germany.

"It has become increasingly clear that the methods we have traditionally relied on to prove ID are outdated, inefficient, and increasingly open to abuse," stated Home Office Minister Meg Hillier. "That has to end, and that is why we are taking the scheme forward."

The government issued a notice (published in the Official Journal of the European Union) inviting firms to bid for contracts worth between £50 million and £500 million to build and run the national ID programme.

However, the Conservatives pledged Thursday to "scrap the costly white elephant" if Britons vote them back into power.

"This project will do nothing to improve our security," said David Davis, the Conservative shadow home secretary. "In fact independent experts like Microsoft and the LSE (London School of Economics) have pointed out that it could well make our security worse while costing the tax payer 20 billion pounds in the process."

The Home Office's claims that the biometric cards will add to Britain's security problems are supported by a 2006 investigation by the UK's Guardian newspaper. The Guardian proved that the new UK biometric passport - another scheme of the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) - could be hacked easily by their computer expert and even more easily by those with the resources to do it - those terrorists and crime lords the system is supposed to thwart. (See http://www.guardian.co.uk/idcards/story/0,,1950226,00.html)

The ID cards will use similar technology, which the EU-funded Future of Identity in the Information Society (Fidis) called "poorly conceived" and a threat to the privacy, security, and identity of EU citizens.

If Britain continues with its plan to ID all subjects biometrically and place them under surveillance, the democratic nation will have adopted major hallmarks of the police state nearly indistinguishable from communist China. The 12.4 million citizens in Shenzen city, for example, will soon have to carry new biometric ID cards containing home address, work history, background, ethnicity, religion and medical insurance. The government plans to place them under watch with a network of 20,000 cameras, in addition to 180,000 existing private security cameras in the workplace that are also monitored by the government. This programme is meant to identify criminals and social or political dissidents.

About four million Britons a year are expected to get the biometric cards when they renew their passports once the scheme is off the ground.