ID cards: "sleepwalking into the surveillance state"

Conservatives.com
Feb. 14, 2006

David Davis has warned that the controversial Government scheme to introduce official ID cards into Britain will result in the nation "sleepwalking into the surveillance state".

And the Shadow Home Secretary said the plan to force people to obtain a card when they apply for a new passport, while having their personal details logged on a national database, would make them targets for hackers, fraudsters and conmen all over the world.

Speaking as the Government managed to stave off a backbench Labour rebellion and secure a Commons majority of 31 during the latest vote on the ID card legislation, Mr Davis declared: "Establishing a national database would create the most attractive possible target for every fraudster, terrorist, confidence trickster and hacker on the planet."

He added: "These people will be able to lift data out, put viruses and false data in. Far from protecting the public, the Government will put the individual citizen at risk."

At the end of a Commons debate, the Government won approval to overturn changes made to the legislation by the House of Lords, and allow for the automatic and compulsory issuing of ID cards to people when they renew their passports from 2008. The Bill now returns to the House of Lords.

During the debate, Mr Davis warned that the Government had misused personal information to mount dishonest attacks on individuals, and also criticised the high price of the cards scheme, which experts have predicted could cost as much as £300 per person, or more than £1,000 for a family of four.

He also warned that the system would be open to inaccuracy and insecurity. "So far from protecting the public, the Government will put the individual citizen at risk by creating a culture of complacency which is based on an ill-designed and ill-thought out scheme," Mr Davis said. And he argued that the Government was insisting on "covert, creeping compulsion" because ministers realise that their expensive, cumbersome system will never be popular, making it necessary to get people signed up whether they like it or not.

The Shadow Home Secretary said Parliament should protect the citizen's right to choose, and should not discover that the politicians and nation have "sleepwalked into the surveillance state".