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Britain’s Big Brother State
Britain is increasingly becoming a Big Brother state (and that’s not referring to a national obsession with the TV programme Big Brother or Celebrity Big Brother) with the government pressing ahead with their plans to introduce ID cards. Every British citizen will have to pay a large amount for the obligatory cards. If they don’t carry an ID card they will be refused access to work, benefits or health treatment. If they lose the card they will have to pay a fine. Anyone who does not have their card on their person could be detained at a police station.
All their personal details will be electronically recorded on the card including health records, criminal record if any, which would apply to about half the male population in Glasgow even if all they’ve ever done is to defend themselves against a drunken aggressor in a pub. Anyone who has ever committed a minor offence or who has been cautioned or questioned, or charged but not convicted of a more serious offence will have it recorded for all to see and face being discriminated against by any prospective employer scanning the card which will relegate many decent hardworking citizens to the scrap heap. Airport staff will be able to see every detail and anyone who has a conviction for a petty theft such as shoplifting as a child, egged on by their pals for a laugh, face being harassed and searched every time they travel. Every person who has a record for “drug offences” because they once smoked a joint in their hippy days faces being body-searched.
Don’t think, “Oh, well, that doesn’t concern me as I have a clean record.” Clerical and typographical errors often occur, resulting in incorrect records. Administration staff entering details on people’s cards could accidentally enter your name and the details of a person with the same name or date of birth but who has a long criminal record on the same card and then you may wonder why it has suddenly become almost impossible to get a job, and blame it on the recession, unaware that you are carrying a card with incorrect information about you.
Arguments by the government that such cards will improve security against terrorism are not valid as would-be terrorists can simply steal people’s cards and modify them the way they already do with stolen passports. Currently people’s identity is already being stolen by scanning in details from stolen credit cards. Thieves are committing fraud in other people’s names, blighting people’s credit records. The identity of professional people like doctors has already been stolen by people who then pose as them and get well-paid jobs doing things that they are unqualified to do (like remove patients’ appendices.) How much more information could be obtained from a stolen ID card and misused, causing both trouble for the card owner and a danger to the public. Moreover, government departments are notoriously careless with losing databases of personal information. Such stolen databases could provide thieves and terrorists with information to assume an identity and apply for an ID card through legitimate channels.
The government is already introducing ID cards by the back door, by targeting children first, in order to accustom the next generation to the idea so it won’t be questioned too much in the future. Currently all sorts of details about children including fingerprints have been harvested in schools without their consent or the consent of their parents and against their human rights and have been entered into computerised systems. Computers and databases sometimes get lost or stolen or hacked and this means that if the details about the children’s names, ages and addresses fall into the wrong hands, our children’s safety could be at risk.
For more information visit www.no2id.net |