NO2ID

Am I too late to renew my passport without being forced by the lying scum in power to surrender my fingerprints for the perusal of the world?

When will it be too late?

All info gratefully received.

signed,

outraged citizen.

The UK Passport Agency website at http://www.ukpa.gov.uk/ makes no mention of requiring fingerprints or any other biometrics (except your photo, as ever was). They mention on their news page at

http://www.ukpa.gov.uk/news/news.asp?st ... ement=1020 (dated 17th Nov 2005):

that the fee going up nine quid from 1st December '05 is intended to fund (among other wonderful things):

the gradual introduction of new biometric ´ePassports´ from February 2006

This is sort of confirmed on http://www.ukpa.gov.uk/news/news.asp?st ... ement=1007 (12th Sep 2005) which explains how the good citizens of Manchester were to be invited to a "roadshow" all about the wonders of biometrics in preparation for the introduction of "ePassports" from "early 2006". This gushy little news piece explains how our caring government

"does not want British citizens to have ´second class´ passports and will be moving towards fingerprint as well as facial image data in passports in the future to keep in step with our European partners."


and explains how

Members of the public will be able to have their irises and fingerprints recorded as part of the UK Passport Service (UKPS) awareness raising campaign taking place around the country.

"Be able", eh? Nice to have the choice… I hope they destroyed the recorded data after they'd finished the demo. Of course they did.

Personally I'm quite happy with my nasty "second class" passport which I replaced in August last year (at which time the date for biometric ones was rumoured to be October '05).

Apart from the Manchester roadshow you mentioned, I have not been aware of ANY such campaign around the country. As I take a daily paper, it's not like I've had my head under a rock for a few months (and hence missed any announcements).

I renewed my passport on 30th November, about 3hrs before the Post Office closed

The Home Office tried to keep it very, very quiet; but we found it: in Edinburgh, Gateshead, Dudley, Bristol and Southampton. Since then UKPS have only dared hold it within government-controlled secure premises with selected audiences.

Hopefully the Home Office will try to pull a similar stunt in the near future; we got some great publicity from it in the local media (TV, papers). It was also a great opportunity for some of us to make friends with Andy Burnham!

Me neither. That was the "awareness raising campaign" the Passport Agency mentioned pretty much in passing in the news release I cited, not particularly the one I mentioned.

So, does that mean that from now on, if you renew your passport your information will be put on the NIR and you'll effectively have signed up for an ID card?

Just want to check cause if I can renew my passport now without it becoming an ID card, I might do so because then I will have the use of a passport for a long time, and the need for one won't be something that would cause me issues, given that I have joined the pledge not to get an ID card...

Not yet, because the database doesn't exist, has yet to be commissioned and with your help, we're going to kill the Bill anyway.

I'd keep checking these forums because even if we do Kill Bill, they're probably going to build the exact same Stasi database under the biometric passports scheme. We'll probably organise a mass renewal date to pre-empt the interviews.