Comments on: Why Won’t Anyone Give Me An ID Card?

By: Stu

Stu — Thu, 07 May 2009 21:57:23 +0000

Measured, I had a choice – not to holiday abroad, or indeed, not to come back. Those are two perfectly reasonable and rational possibilities.

Blue Eyes, yes – essentially I’d just like a Passport 2.0, and I had originally hoped that was what the ID project was about.

You’ve hit upon an interesting problem of international acceptance, but all of the information needed for the current passport system is the picture, the number and the barcode verification, and I don’t see why this couldn’t be included on a card as a fallback for countries which haven’t updated.

Ideally, there’d be an international standard, and individual countries could produce whatever form of passports they wanted, as long as they were compatible with the standard. Fat chance of that happening, of course.

By: Blue Eyes

Blue Eyes — Thu, 07 May 2009 21:46:26 +0000

Stu I have to agree with your modest proposal. Basically you are saying that the passport should become a bit more high tech. The problem with that of course is that every country would have to adopt some clever electronic “stamp” system to make sure it can track you in and out of their country. Have you tried the Bolivia-Chile border?

The passport works because it is a “network of trust” which doesn’t need instant electronic authentication. It is deliberately low tech which is what makes it universal. As any seasoned traveler knows, you can’t always use every cash point at any time of day. If Sierra Leone’s network cables went down for a few days how would you convince their border guards that you hadn’t forged your bit of plastic?

By: Measured

Measured — Thu, 07 May 2009 21:39:38 +0000

Weren’t you made to buy a passport if you wanted to get back into your country after a holiday abroad?

By: Stu

Stu — Thu, 07 May 2009 20:53:28 +0000

I think that’s hyperbole – it can’t be made compulsory as long as it costs money at the point of receipt, and they can’t be made for free because the government simply cannot afford the project any other way. Even if that weren’t true, the Tories are planning on scrapping the scheme.

For sound, practical reasons, there is precisely zero possibility of these ID cards becoming compulsory in their present form.

Of course, what I was writing about was a totally different thing to the current ID scheme being proposed – as I tried to make as clear as I could. Nobody has a problem with the idea of a passport, and there’s no reason a passport couldn’t be a little plastic card with a picture on it. Hence, I’d like one of those.

By: Measured

Measured — Thu, 07 May 2009 20:39:30 +0000

‘Voluntary’ will become compulsory as those with them will be given incentives such as the ability to fast track access to services. The approach is softly softly. Ms Smith and her civil servants are very good at patiently manipulating us so we reach their point of view, or at least they hope we will.

They may have to think up a marktetinf scheme Buy 1 and get yer spouse’s free or like signing up to a book club scam. I am sure they will get around to ensuring you have one eventually. After all they want to reach their targets or they will be out of a job. When you have it, do be proud of it since there will be so many others without an ‘identical’ one, I hope.