"Big Brother" Gaining Ground in Great Britain
It seems that "Big Brother" is gaining ground in Great Britain. Starting in 2009, in order to apply for a passport, Britons will be required to register their fingerprints, facial scans and a host of personal information such as second homes, drivers licenses and insurance policy numbers. If they do this, they will receive a national ID card and then their passport. However, the program is not mandatory. The British government has said that the program is voluntary and that people will be allowed to opt out. However, those that do will be denied receiving a British passport.
Since the program has been proposed one in eight Britons has said that they would refuse to register their personal information with the government. This could mean that up to five million people would be refused the right to travel outside of Great Britain.
Phil Booth, a member of the NO2ID group, said: "The idea that ID cards scheme is voluntary, and people can opt-out, is a joke. There are all sorts of reasons why people need to travel, not just for holidays. There is work, visiting relatives. What are these people supposed to do? It stretches the definition of voluntary beyond breaking point. They will go to any length to get personal information for this huge database. Who knows what will happen to it then?"
The notion that this is a voluntary program comes in since Britons need not receive one of the official ID cards, however in order to receive a passport they will still need to surrender their personal information and pay the full £93 price for an ID card and a passport. So, in spite of the government's insistence that the program is mandatory, the only way in which Britons will be able to avoid the program entirely is if they never renew or apply for a passport again; this means that those British citizens who refuse to participate for whatever reasons will effectively be compelled to stay in Great Britain for the rest of their lives, unable to leave the island nation for whatever reason.
Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Nick Clegg said: "This comment confirms long standing suspicions that the government's claim that the ID database will be voluntary is simply not true. The voluntary claim is serving as a fig leaf for a universal compulsory system. Once again the government's ID card plans are being pursued behind the backs of the British people."
Nearly 6.6 million Britons apply for travel documents annually, and Booth stated that these challenges to the new law were "inevitable" as "restricting the right of free movement is a grave breach of human rights law." Indeed, a survey found that 12% of Britons would refuse to participate in the program, "even if it meant paying a fine of serving a prison sentence."
The Labour Party has pursued the introduction of the ID card legislation for a long time, claiming that the program would help to defeat fraud and illegal immigration. Opponents to the legislation have protested that there is not enough oversight of the program and are concerned that costs could escalate out of control. Indeed some analysts predict that the final cost of the program could exceed £20 billion.
When asked why the ID cards program is linked to the issuing of passports, a spokesman for the Home Office said "it was more cost effective to link the issuing of passports and ID cards, rather than allow people to register their details for one but not the other."
Published by Bryan Terry
A second-year grad student trying to survive parenthood and a teaching assistantship. View profile
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11 Comments
Post a CommentYou may have heard that legislation creating compulsory ID Cards passed a crucial stage in the House of Commons. You may feel that ID cards are not something to worry about, since we already have Photo ID for our Passport and Driving License and an ID Card will be no different to that. What you have not been told is the full scope of this proposed ID Card, and what it will mean to you personally.
The proposed ID Card will be different from any card you now hold. It will be connected to a database called the NIR, (National Identity Register)., where all of your personal details will be stored. This will include the unique number that will be issued to you, your fingerprints, a scan of the back of your eye, and your photograph. Your name, address and date of birth will also obviously be stored there.
There will be spaces on this database for your religion, residence status, and many other private and personal facts about you. There is unlimited space for every other details of your
Maybe the book of Revelations was onto something. The parallels are eerie.
Yet another of the very numerous small steps these fascists are introducing to bring about the New World Order. These psychotics will have us in a single world currency, one world government and a brainwashed, microchipped population of sheep in a handful of years. RFID and ID cards are a single facet of the most serious global threat to human freedom in history - the New World Order. If it isn't stopped fast at this level we'll be fed ever increasing false justifications for total loss of liberties - the fake War on Terror, fake pandemics, fake reasons for monitoring our traffic movements and deliberately engineered terrorist atrocities to con us into further military invasions dressed up as "liberations".
Remember that instilling fear in us is their main objective and so we have to come up with ways that we don't have to participate in their new world order conditioning. If ALL of us refuse to participate, then how can they put ALL of us in jail? THEY and their ideas and their attempts at control would become obsolete. Have no fear. Let's start thinking for ourselves and speaking up!
Let's have the war, Steve. At least then we'd get a fair crack at our would-be tyrants..
Seems like the bloody government just want to create a large prison. Get me off this rock before the civil war!
this really is scary stuff! yet another way of controlling us and the majority of normal folk just dont see this!! we have to open our minds and educate people of this!
Interesting, well-written article!
Actually, to be strictly accurate, it is *application* for a passport that will require ID registration. You don't have a right to be granted one.
The really scary bit is not the ID card, it is that you will be registered on the National Identity Register, a database that will collect together 50 categories of data about you and linke together all official records to make a complete personal dossier tyhat will track you through life. Many countries have ID cards; not even the People's Republic of China has a system like this.
Sophie ... I don't mind the idea of an ID Card ... it's denying people passports if they do not want to register with the government that I have a problem with. It is the government saying that this is a voluntary program but then saying if you don't volunteer then you don't get travel documents that I find distasteful.