Barcode Nation

The Guardian has published a very useful guide to the Identity Cards Act 2006. As well as describing the main provisions of the act, the article goes on to discuss the background leading up to it and significant coverage of the criticisms, notably from Liberty and NO2ID.
Well worth a read. It’s also a useful link [...]

In my post yesterday looking at betting odds for the date of the next general election, I hinted that a change of government could be a positive step for civil liberties campaigners.
 
I’ve now stumbled across this excellent piece from the ever impressive James Graham. He questions where the Conservatives will go with Human Rights if [...]

…it may just land you with a visit from Plod.
 
The BBC’s Five Live Breakfast sparked a flurry of anti-surveillance texts this morning following their story on internet companies being forced to keep records of our emails.
 
From March, new legislation will force ISPs to keep information about every e-mail sent or received in the UK for one year. [...]

Welsh Lib Dem AM Peter Black brings our attention to Cabinet Minister James Purnell who has misplaced important documents for a second time.
Rather than poke fun at the unfortunate Mr Purnell, I’d like to second what Peter Black says:
The purpose of this post is not to draw attention to Mr. Purnell’s double whammy, though he [...]

From The Register:
Almost one in ten records within HMRC’s framework database contain errors, according to figures unveiled by Conservative MP Justine Greening.
The frameworks database only contains quite simple information - first, second and surname, title, sex, data of birth, address and National Insurance number. Which begs the question of how many errors more complicated government records [...]

According to today’s Guardian, the private sector will be asked to manage and run a communications database that will keep track of everyone’s calls, emails, texts and internet use. This latest step towards a full surveillance state will be revealed in a consultation paper to be published next month by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith.
The article hints [...]

The Liberal Democrats have uncovered figures that show nearly 50,000 Government security passes have been lost or stolen since 2001 - that’s 16 per day. Over 37,000 of these were from the Ministry of Defence.
A MoD spokesman said: “There are approximately 108,000 personnel in the Armed Forces and the number of lost/stolen ID cards for [...]

NO2ID Birmingham united their local politicians earlier this month in the fight against ID cards. They composed a letter to the local press to protest against the introduction of ID cards for foreign nationals. It was signed by 5 MP’s (2 Lib Dem, 1 Lab, 1 Ind Lab, 1 Con), 13 City Councillors (Lib Dem, [...]