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Compulsory national ID cards.


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As some of you know, the British government is trying to introduce a compulsory national ID card. The government is arguing that it is necessary to deal with terrorism, crime and illegal immigrants.

 

How do you people feel about the concept? Is it no different to things like driving licences and passports, or is it an infringement of civil liberties?

 

I personally am opposed to the scheme for the following reasons:

 

1. The London School of Economics thinks that the government is going to end up charging us £300 each.

2. There is some evidence that our government will sell the information it collects for the national database to anybody who wants it.

3. It will create a black market for counterfeit ID cards (someone will find a way) for criminals and terrorists.

4. Some terrorists, including the Shoe Bomber are British subjects. An ID card scheme will not pick them up.

5. It will make it easier for unscrupilous employers to cheat illegal immigrants. A lot of them work in the building trade where they have to endure unsafe working conditions for wages that are below the minimum wage, and they are often cheated out of that by the employer.

6. Many of these immigrants will be forced into crime to support themselves.

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Cost of a drivers licence is cheap. National ID cards won't be, will entitle you to do things you already can do without needing one (access to NHS, apply for benefits and everything else) as you can use your driver's licence or passport, and the fact that every government usuallly mucks up any 'modernisation of infrastructure' and either goes over budget or fails to get it working entirely obviously is perfectly fine. Why shouldn't governments be incompetent? :P
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Here in Spain, this ID system has been working for as long as I can remember, and at a personal level the only true inconvenience of it is the paperwork when you 1st apply for 1 (they are issued when you reach 14 years old here) get's stolen with the wallet, you change address or any other main change. Renewal is free as long as you do it within the expiration time-frame.

 

Anyway, let me try and asnwer following Accounting Troll's listed points:

 

1. You people are already being charged (and most paying) for and idiotic "TV license" or are you talking in an indirect payment through taxes as the goverment spends money in the infrastructure envolved in the process of putting this to work? If that's the case, why not just think of it as money that won't go into the politician's pockets?

 

2. True, but do you think they aren't already doing that?

 

3. Defenetly, but credit card's can also be forged and I don't see any hype about that. Also, I don't think they'll go for more than just forged passports for terrorists attacks if they're from other countries. Or worse, get perfectly valid papers, live normal lives until some mad guy gives the command and perform a suicide run.

 

4. Can't counter this comment, basically 'cause the goverment just use "big issues" to try and gain favor of a decision they want passed.

 

5. I can't see how exactly will it make it easier. Care to elaborate

 

6. You mean they aren't already?

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1. If it pays for the BBC, probably the finest news service in the world, then I can live with that. If the whole thing goes over-budget, and it will, oh yes, politicians will get their share of the increase. They're like parasites. Correction: They ARE parasites.

 

2. I doubt it, or at least, not to such an extent as they will do if they get this system.

 

3. There's little point in forging credit cards, seeing as you only need the details off them, not the card itself to order things over the phone/net. Forgeries will always be available, and they'll be a damn sight more important than forged credit cards. Passports only entitle you to enter/leave the country, they won't entitle you to use the NHS, apply for benefits, access the full internal infrastructure of the country, etc. These cards will be expensive normally, forgeries will be worth a lot more.

 

4. Terrorists will either get great forgeries or the real thing, one way or another. ID cards won't make any difference.

 

5. It will make a bad situation worse.

 

6. No, surprisingly enough. Most of them work long hours for crap pay, doing the jobs no one else wants to do. They usually come from places that are a lot worse, so their work ethic is a Hell of a lot more rigorous. People whine about immigrants, illegal or not, when said immigrants have strong family values and work hard, which is what made a lot of countries great.

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A question. In the UK, aren't you issued a Social Security number when you're born (or a couple of weeks after) as a UK citizen? If this is the case, they you could say there's already an ID system working.

 

A goverment controlled broadcasting corporation a "fine news service"? Not in my vocabulary.

 

Rather than forging CCs, what I really meant was copying CCs, the magnetic band that is plus obtaining the "secret code number". It's been done and with very simple, yet effective methods.

 

As for the last 2 points, I just want to make clear I don't see the reasoning that will lead to such situation.

How will having an ID make it easier to cheat illegal inmigrants?, the only thing that favours this is when the inmigrants DON'T have any papers/ID that "validates" their presence in the country.

Or, how will having an ID system will force more inmigrants into criminal life?

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The head of the BBC is appointed by the government, and it is the government that sets the licence fees, so the government does have some indirect control over the BBC. Don't forget that they forced the head of the BBC to resign in the aftermath of the Hutton inquiry.

 

The only real check on BBC impartiality is that the political parties and corporate owned media are constantly on the look out for any sign of BBC political bias.

 

Kret:

 

I'm interested by what you said about how people in Spain have got used to the ID cards over the years, so they no longer seem like a big deal. Our government plans to make them voluntary for several years in the hope that we will see things the same way by the time they are compulsory. We did indeed adapt to all the CCTV cameras we have nowadays.

 

It's a big step for us because I think that historically we have only had a national ID card scheme during the two World Wars (and their immediate aftermath) out of fear of German spies. This fear turned out to be unjustified.

 

We do indeed have social security numbers that are unique to each individual, so I suppose that in a way we do already have national ID cards. You need a social security number to be able to claim any sort of benefits and to pay taxes. However there are few other circuimstances in which you will be asked for your social security number.

 

Most employees in the UK have to tell their employer their social security number when they start a new job. The employer then automatically deducts income tax and national insurance (theoretically a seperate tax to fund health and walfare, but in reality a seperate income tax) from each paycheque the employee receives. This system means the employee doesn't have the hassle of filling in tax returns at the end of the year and scraping together the money to pay the Inland revenue a lump sum at the end of each year.

 

Some industries employ a lot of workers on a casual, self employed, basis. A reputable employer deducts 19% of the employee's pay and sends it to the Inland Revenue as tax.

 

However, a lot of these employers perfer a less formal cash-in-hand approach because they don't want to bother the tax man. If they know that a particular employee is an illegal immigrant, they can freely cheat him out of his wages because they know that he will not dare go to the police because he would be deported. The ID card system would make it harder for an illegal immigrant to kid his unscrupilous employer into thinking that he has a legitimate right to live in the UK.

 

The social security number system is badly enforced at the moment. There have been a number of cases when an individual aquires several numbers and uses them to make several fraudulent benefit claims, and no employer ever bothers to check up on whether the number his employee has given him is genuine.

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