At 4:48 PM +0100 4/30/04, Dave Green wrote:

bubbling fondues

Mr Blunkett's publicity campaign to gee Britons to get inky-fingered, red-eyed and funky with their biometric entitlement cards continued this week. "This is about true identity," he said on Breakfast with Frost, in an apparent attempt to win over the Vernor Vinge fans. "Being known, being checkable, being used in order to ensure we know who's in the country, what they're entitled to and whether they're up to no good". And if that first mention of the cards' unique "Santa Claus" capability to discern moral failings in carriers isn't terrifying enough, you really should read the government's new 160 page opus on how they'll be running the show. It's not about the ID cards: it's about the huge centralised biometric database the government is planning to smuggle in on the back of it. Couldn't they just put the biometrics on the card where we can see them, and then store a comparison hash or some other translucent database technique centrally? Of course not. Terrorists would win. Feel free to add your own comments to the consultation, which requires replies by July 20th. And we're *so* sure they'll count all the responses correctly this time. http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/docs3/identitycardsconsult.pdf - consultation. "Vindicated" by bomb plot, apparently: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3607141.stm - vs http://www.spy.org.uk/spyblog/archives/000251.html http://www.libdems.org.uk/index.cfm/page.homepage/section.home/article.6599 - why not print them out + carry with you at all times?

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