We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.

Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]

Biometric passport ‘back door to ID cards’

This Telegraph article gives a slightly different angle to Guardian’s story yesterday as it talks about the ID pilot scheme in the context of a new biometric passport:

David Blunkett was accused yesterday of using a pilot scheme for a new biometric passport as a test run for a national identity card. Civil liberties campaigners said the Home Secretary was disguising his true purposes in a backdoor attempt to gauge public reaction to ID cards.

Over the next few years, passports are to be adapted to resemble credit cards containing biometric information, such as iris patterns or fingerprints.

Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, said:

The Home Office is being disingenuous. They know that they can’t trial ID cards without parliamentary approval, so they are doing it through the back door… They have admitted that the information gleaned from this so-called passport trial will be used for the purposes of an ID card.

The state is not your friend.

Comments are closed.