NO2ID

Thank you for having an open forum.
I started off being instinctively against ID cards, probably due to a surfeit of SF as a youth.
So over the past couple of weeks I have, thanks to your open forum, discovered what lay behind ID cards.
I now believe that most of the conspiracy theories expounded in this forum are true, to one degree or another, and kept from us by the global-corporate controlled media.
All the global corporations have vast resources which they use to lobby and influence governments to pass laws favourable to them, the citizens have the least influence.
Surely the corporations are only human and these influences are only good for mankind?
Corporations are enormous amoral creatures, they are immortal( unless stupid, Enron), they are always hungry and they now have a pinnacle to reach for: Microsoft with a 95% (life is so much easier)monopoly, but B. Gates is a good guy, right, because he donates a percentage of his unspendable fortune to Africa!
Rant over.
48 year old male, who until recently supported the labour party and thought he knew a lot about politics and the world.

I said the 'how to resist' forum was a little counter productive, because: a) it's distraction and b), any attempt 'oppose' the system, prior to it being made compulsory, could lead to someone losing their driving licence, passport or, worse, welfare benefits with very little gain for the overall campaign.

Even with the loonies and extremists, the No2ID fora are an extremely useful and valuable resource.



While many of the 'dangers' of ID registration are largely hypothetical, there can be little doubt that this Bill's scheme will have significant impact of the lives of people in the UK. ID checks will become more frequent and with the gov't selling secure NIR verification, many of these will involve the inconvenience of a biometric scan.

There are good arguments for a secure form of ID and I believe it will be possible to have a biometric based system that could satisfy both the needs of the state and provide the privacy that the citizen wants. However, I not convinced there any great dangers of not having an ID card.



Perhaps you should spend less time reading and researching the loonies on this forum and more time digesting the bill and its consequences for your children.

Having waded through this thread... I'd like to put in my tuppenyworth.

The lunatic fringe are just that. It was pointed out that most of us just skip along to the next topic when presented with rambling quotes from Revelations - I do, too. However, this is a discussion forum and is clearly reflecting the opinions of the people who post - not necessarily the organisation. To me this has always been perfectly clear.

The SPAM is best dealt with by enforced registration for posting. Yes, it may reduce the amount of comment - but may also reduce the amount of dross, too. I am noticing some stuff that really shouldn't be on here - and I have pointed it out to the mods.

Moderation could be more vigorous. In particular, posts advocating violence and racist comment should be expunged quickly.

In conclusion, I agree that doomsayer is closer to the mainstream membership than he gives credit for.

Perhaps it would be better if we all had to register before using the internet - perhaps using biometric ID cards. Then the government could protect us from all these weirdos and extremists.


If you genuinely do lie awake at night fearful that paedophiles are after your kids, please go and talk to a doctor.


And yet the failings highlighted by the inquest were related to inadequate use of the information that the police already had in their databases.


That sounds like a reasonable progression. After all, what possible motive could anyone have for endangering public health by concealing their medical records? You make a very good case for killing this bill stone dead.


It is, of course, perfectly reasonable to require people to identify themselves before entering shops.


As you have claimed to be a proficient user of the internet, I will leave you to seek out the studies that investigate how accurately witnesses can identify criminals when shown photographs.


It will obviously be to the public good that any people with transmittable diseases should be denied access to the NHS and it will clearly be better for Britain if their children do not get access to a formal education.


Or times of shopping, presumably.


Certainly not, I wouldn't wish to waste my time or yours, but I do wish my MP took my words to heart as readily as you clearly do, doomsayer!

Arguable. I believe in free speech but Britain has never been a free speech state. The consensus is that you can't just go and say what you like about Black people, Jesus Christ, inciting violence etc. Don't agree but most people don't see it my way and if you can't do that in the street why on a broadcast medium like the internet?





Understandable comment but you would probably feel quite differently if you had kids. Better counter argument would be that the paedophiles should be locked up. And the perverts are as likely to be in the registration station collecting personal details of attractive young women. There - I have shot down one of my own key arguments for turning in favour of ID cards. I said I was open to be convinced either way!




True, but the current national register was intended to prevent the problems exposed at Soham and requires a check of a genuine ID.




Not quite sure what you meant by that one. You are probably too young to remember this but when Aids first appeared some quite Draconian laws were proposed to halt the spread of the disease (yearly blood test and tatooing of infected individuals). They were never taken up and millions have died. I am not sure which is better -liberalism or death? The Spanish flu pandemic killed millions upon millions. We have been lucky in our generation to escape such things as large scale wars and pandemics but our luck could run out I guess. Maybe an ID card + register could be useful in such circumstances - I could be convinced. Certainly I can't imagine that the authorities would act as if nothing unusual was happening. The WHO released a report earlier today on Asian bird flu that said the world would grind to a halt.




Went to Turkey and there was a big shopping centre where they frisked everyone and searched their bags. Think they checked ID too. The Kurds like to set off bombs there so it was quite reassuring that everyone got checked. The same happens in the UK at big rock gigs. I am not sure which I dislike most - having my ID checked or some big blokes hand up the inside of my leg.



Valid point, as I suggested in my own text.




The fact that illegal immigrants might get denied access to the NHS is a matter of policy - ID cards make it possible to do so if the public felt that was the best course, but it is not necessarily the case that the ID cards be used this way. It is therefore not a "showstopper" as far as I can see.



I am not sure what obligation the UK has to educate the children of another country, particularly if they are here illegally. If you are adopting a high moral tone, which is not at all unreasonable and having been to several 3rd world countries I can entirely understand, perhaps it would be better if we paid to have them educated in their home countries which would no doubt be cheaper and more efficient?

Anyway Geraint, like I say the arguments go back and forth and I don't entirely disagree with anything you have said. Where I have made pro-ID comments please take them as nothing more than a means by which you can hone your own arguments to perfection. I think I have encouraged this thread to wander away from the original topic and I feel a bit guilty about that. Perhaps I should leave this thread alone to find its own course. Please feel free to have another pop at me though!

Well I'm not too young to remember it, nor innumerate (as panic-mongers-in-office tend to assume the public is). We were told in the 1980s that there would be a million people infected in this country by now. Despite the fact that millions were spent on propaganda, there have been minimal changes in people's behaviour in the UK outside the gay scene. Yet, the numbers are only in the tens of thousands infected here, and only a few thousand have died. If you examine the regularly published disease surveillance figures, you will discover that the largest number of new notifications has consistently for some years been for people who were infected in Africa.

"They were never taken up" is merely afffirming the consequent: there's no evidence they would have helped. Your rhetoric suggests that we then draw an analogy: panicky measures against AIDS weren't used in the 80s, therefore we should consider ID control as a panicky measure against a range of folk demons. The argumentative model: fallacy therefore fallacious analogy, is not an attractive one--except perhaps to ministers and their spin-doctors.

Putting aside rhetoric, the questions you need to answer in relation to each of these suggested uses are: How big is the problem, really? (Not how strongly do you feel about it.) How much would a national ID system help? (Bearing in mind it may be worse than useless.) And, would it be cost effective?

You would be better off going to a NO2ID event or meeting and seeing that the people are very much like you are.

Reading Spy Blog or any other website linked to by the registered members here is a very unreliable way of trying to see what they are like.

You must have observed by now that online persona are different from face to face ones, especially when people have several online "Identities" and write or contribute to several websites.

The fact that illiberal measures were not used to control the spread of Aids may be more to do with the fact that the average Sun reader considered those affected to be a bunch of promiscuous perverts (not my opinion incidentally). Had the disease been Asian flue, SARs or bubonic plague which would have infected or killed a very significant proportion of the population regardless of their habits then I am quite sure that the public would have accepted, indeed demanded, illiberal measures to control it. Outbreaks of SARs were indeed controlled by such measures. Thus I can imagine a condition whereby the authorities would want to lock down an affected area to control movement in and out, indentifying people who are "clean" and then registering this in the NIR so that they could go about their normal business and keep the country running. Such pandemics are not without precedent - the Spanish Flu pandemic during WWI killed 1 in 3 people that were infected. The AIDs epidemic merely raises the possibility that such epidemics can happen in sophisticated countries in modern times.





How strongly you feel about it is important. ID Cards are an emotive issue, in much the same way as paedophilia is. If it wasn't about strength of feeling then No2ID would have to submit to the public concensus. The public seem happy to be indentified, although it seems they have doubts about the costs and surveillance issues. Are you happy to submit to such a consensus and carry the card? Or is it just the surveillance issue you are concerned about and you have merely connected to the two separate issues in the same way the government have?

Actually, I'd be inclined to suppose that the infection of an unpopular group might have illiberal measures more, not less, likely.



I don't understand your point here. Which "two separate issues"? We may be strongly motivated to argue, but that does not affect the strength of our arguments, merely our willingness to put them. If our arguments were weak, fervour might still persuade others, but it wouldn't make them less weak. As for submission to the idle velleity of the mass: