ID cards won't halt criminals
The Home Office, answering my criticism of the controversial ID card scheme, claimed it would provide "a much stronger way of protecting people's identities". On the contrary.
If you collect lots of personal information about everybody, put it all in one place, link it to all the other databases you have, and then allow thousands - even millions - of people to access it, you are asking for trouble. It will be a magnet for identity thieves. Yet that is exactly what the Government is doing.
The Home Office has already started sacking workers for abuse of the Identity and Passport Service database, and the bulk of the scheme hasn't even started yet.
Australia is further down the road, and its experience shows what we are in for.
More than 100 workers have resigned or been sacked for "surfing the details of family and friends or taking a peek at their neighbour's records". In one incident, women and children in a refuge were put at risk and had to be rehoused.
In America, where databases are linked through everyone's unique social security number, identity theft is rampant. As soon as we start identifying ourselves with our national ID card numbers the same thing will happen here.
Giving all your personal details to the Government won't make you safer. Join our local NO2ID group, and together we'll get this intrusive and unnecessary law repealed.
Dr Rob Findlay, Shrewsbury
