NO2ID

The only options below the petition are:<ul>
<li>I would <b>also</b> like to support the NO2ID campaign.</li>
<li>I am <b>already</b> a signed-up supporter or paid-up member of the NO2ID campaign.</li>
</ul>Where is the option for<ul>
<li>I <b>just</b> want to register my support</li>
</ul>
Also there's no need for vandalized personal photos on the front page.
I agree with your position, but this kind of thing reduces your credibility

I've been encouraging people to sign this petition, and some have refused because of the lack of an "I support this but don't mail me" option.

Is this just an oversight?

It is entirely deliberate. And was the subject of considerable debate before we adopted it.

There is no point in people just registering their views. We do not believe that the PM's mind will be changed by a petition.

While we are happy if people do oppose the Government's ID scheme, the campaign is about stopping it, not making people feel better by allowing them to express their feelings.

What might deal with Government complacency is more people becoming involved in the campaign, even in a passive way. If someone only wants to sign a petition then their details are an administrative deadweight. (And for myself, I can't see why they'd waste the typing time.)

We are struggling to fight a government machine vastly well-funded out of your taxes, using only volunteers and modest donations. We need to do what's most effective with our limited resources. It is better to ignore the demands of a few people who are essentially saying that they absolutely won't be any further help to us, than create the likelihood that some other people (who might otherwise be further drawn in) end up casually cut off by the clicking of a radio-button.

The problem is with your campaign is that it is starting to suggest some kind of exclusivity. Who are you people? What (successful) campaigns have you organised in the past? What are you actually doing? Why did I only come across your web-site by accident? If you folk are so keen on civil liberties why did it take you so long to organise a campaign that the government is all but done before you have even started?

I was involved on the perifery of a local campaign recently to stop a football stadium being built on our doorstep and this was much more impressive than what I see here. More people were involved, there was a lot of research being done on all aspects of the project, everyone was tied in to help. Some of the help was simply looking for facts on the web, but when hundreds of people are doing this (some of whom were professionals) you quickly dig up all sorts of hot facts. The government, with all its tax revenue, doesn't actually have the free resources to tackle thousands of individuals digging up stories about ID cards in other countries, checking legal matters, writing to MPs etc. and this costs almost nothing.

What I see on this web-site is not very impressive. It seems disorganised. The fact that 2000 people have registered is derisory. 1Million people on the streets of London didn't stop the Iraq War, why should 2000 net-heads? Some of the comments on the forums are very immature. This campaign is in danger of being lumped into the same bracket as "Fathers4Justice". According to the polls there are some 17m adults against ID cards. Time to stop messing around and engage with them. How about email chain letters to get the message across? How about writing articles for the press? How about contacting web-sites to ask them to support the campaign? With 20% of the population now on the net and half of them against ID cards you have 4million people that can be reached practically for free if you can get a campaign rolling.

Get the message out there, get as many people involved as possible. Every little helps. Every email written to an MP, every name on a petition. The government knows it can easily deal with 2000 refuseniks, but it can't deal with 2million. Let them know there really are 2million that really will kick up a fuss and then you have a campaign.

It is a little disingenuous for YOU to come on here and start throwing accusations at No2ID.

What are YOU doing to stop the Bill?

I doubt No2ID feel any need to justify themselves, so I'll attempt to answer for them.

I initially avoided No2ID because of the £10 suggested membership fee. However, people I trusted suggest I get in touch with them and eventually I got along to No2ID's training day ~6 months ago.

Every single one of the No2ID team impressed me with their competence and their dedication. I don't know how many campaigns they've been involved with. I personally have never felt the need to campaign against anything else. They are advised by leaders of other campaign groups (the list is on the website).



Do you have any clue of what we have been up against? No2ID started around August last year. At the time of the first attempt to steamroll this through Parliament they had a couple of hundred members and no money. Now we have 15,000+ and very little money.

In the absence of mass media coverage (never mind No2ID publicity), how (and why) should No2ID get YOUR attention?

You don't have to join us. But it is polite to show a little bit of respect to those you acknowledge are working in their leisure time to protect your freedom.

doomsayer,

I suspect NO2ID has been a lot more active than you realise. I appreciate you're disappointed that you only found NO2ID 'by accident' but NO2ID has been active - writing to MPs, writing to Lords, producing literature, organising local branches around the country (many of which have organised public petition-signing or information campaigns at public stalls) and recently commissioning an ICM poll which received major press attention! Just today NO2ID has been outside Parliament publicly campaigning against the legislation.

If NO2ID isn't doing enough for your liking, please get involved and offer whatever help you can.

Stephen

The count of NO2ID supporters is past 20,000, unless you count the members of organisations that formally support the campaign, in which case it is past 2m. The 2,000 signed up that doomsayer referred to was 2,000 pledging to refuse to register for an ID card in the first 48 hours that pledge was open. That's not a small step for anyone to take, since the Government intends it to entail bankruptcy and starvation.

We have briefed parliamentrians of all parties and been mentioned in debates, quoted extensively in the media, and we are developing a national organisation by a number of people working quite hard for nothing.

I'd say we are doing OK. We'll do whatever it takes. What else do you suggest?

Yes, the website could be better organised. No we can't stop people making naive comments on the forums, or indeed raving bonkers ones... They are forums, not expressions of the organisation's opinion.

...and you shot me down. But then again you didn't really respond to my criticism either. I will admit that my only experience of campaiging has been a local campaign to stop a football stadium being built and I wasn't running that campaign. But the campaign was 100% successful. I got some pointers that I think you might like to consider.

"Militants" and credibility:

During our campaign we attracted a lot of people who were quite miltant in their approach to campaigning. This caused a lot of arguments as the majority wanted law abiding moderation in the campaign but some wanted to chain themselves to police cars. The "militants" are useful as their antics can raise awareness but you can't keep them in the same organisation as the moderates. It causes internal friction. Many of the militants are cranks and nutcases or just misfits and people with a chip on their shoulder. Celebrities and MPs will not want to risk their credibility by associating too strongly with what seems to be a bunch of nutters. Fathers4Justice recently split for this reason. I would suggest that you consider such a split now so it can be handled in an organised way. This will create a receptacle for the militants and nutters where they can be happy making their plots to throw-up on registration officers and leave a moderate law-abiding capaign group that can reach out to middle-England via popular mainstream MPs, celebrities and other well known names. By keeping it real we were able to engage the help of Jonathon Porritt in our campaign which was a huge help for our local issue.

Focus on the concrete: It is very difficult to engage the public in a campaign when the plans are not concrete. Thus it is very difficult to stop a bill in progress. People won't get upset until they have to register and use the card.

Avoid alignments: aligning with a particular party simply loses you the support of people that happen not to agree with that party. This is especially true if the party or group involved is in any way controversial (like UKIP). Let those groups or parties organise their own campaigns. They are not single issue parties so the pubic perception of them becomes complex. Often they are just trying to freeload on the back of a campaign that may turn out to be more popular than their own.

Avoid unqualified advice: beware of people that offer you advice in campaiging. We saw a lot of this in our local campaign. The biggest mouths are not necessarily the wisest. The fact is that very few public campaigns on an issue of this magnitude have been successful. Only those people that have led a successful campaign should be listened to. Their are many campaign groups out there that have had no real impact at all after many years. Once again these groups are often trying to freeload on the back of a single issue campaignt hat may prove to be more popular than they are. Take Charter 88 - it has 80,000 members but No2ID will need a lot more than that to impact government policy, so in the end who will benefit most from that relationship? In our local campaign we had a lot of other local campaigning groups that tried to latch on to us once they realised how much public support we had - one of them even successfully hijacked one of our demonstrations by claiming it was theirs!

Be open: Ironically for an ID card campaign people still need to have an idea of the ID of the people that are running it! Why would people donate money to a group with a mysterious leadership they don't know? This harks back to the issue of credibility. Celebrity endorsement and involvement will actually help the groups credibility and make it easier to raise money, but you need a high degree of credibility, openess and integrity to win the involvement of celebrities. It worked for our little campaign. Make sure everything the group does is out in the open. Every meeting should be minuted and carefully reported.

Get people involved: Our local campaign didn't cost a penny and we didn't ask for donations. There is little reason why this campaign should. Thousands of involved people means thousands of little contributions in time. You need to look at ways of distributing tasks so everyone can contribute a bit. Make sure that people are listened to and seen to be listened to. If people feel they are shouting in the wilderness they will drift away.

Use the net: By far our most useful tool was the net. It is even better for a campaign like this as it effects everyone. Try email chain letter campaigns to get the URL distributed. Try getting the campaign listed on other web-sites. Make the barriers to registration as low as possible. You want hundreds of thousand, possibly millions of people actively expressing support so the governement gets the feeling that the cards won't work. The web-site will be the shop window to the campaign. Allocate tasks to the members - e.g. finding out details of how ID cards are used in all the other contries of the world, finding out about legal issues. Post the information garnered on the site. Set up polls where people can vote on the (legal) means they intend to obstruct the use of the card.

Don't get ambushed: The ID card cost issue is a trap. I can tell you that no person that votes Labour or might be seduced into voting Labour will ever have to pay for the card. If you focus on this issue too much you will get the rug pulled from under your feet. In our local campaign the developers were told they were destroying the local environment - so they promptly split the proposed site for the stadium in two and made half into parkland thus pulling the rug from under our feet.

Stay within the law: Most people are prepared to bend the law but not break it. They will not want to associate with a group that intends from the outset to break the law. Thus the legal fund pledge will reduce the groups appeal and should be something for a more militant group. Celebrities and MPs will stay well away from campaigns advocating illegal activity. They will worry about how far people might go. A pledge to merely be obstructive in the cards use will be more popular and if millions of people plede to do this the government will be forced to back off. Also asking for money will turn people off when all you want them to do is tell the government how awkward they intend to be. Keep donations and petitions separate.

Play it like chess: think how the opposite camp will try and attack you. If there are nutters you will be dismissed as cranks. If their is illegal activity proposed you will be attacked for being exactly the kind of people that should be made to carry the card. If there are very few members you will be attacked for being eccentric outcasts. If you are aligned to other groups you will be accused of having a hidden agenda. The government has been playing this game for a long time - we have a steep learning curve.

Celebrity endorsement: Of course this can be a double edged sword as not all celebrities are that popular! But many celebrities will not like the idea of all their private information being stored in a database for any Tom Dick or Harriet to read. Get a lot of celebrities on board of different types and it makes it much harder for the government to dismiss your aims.

Avoid the Awkward Squad: Some campaigners like Tony Benn and Peter Tatchell are the kiss of death to campaigns aimed at middle-England. They have been around for a long time, they are despised by the papers and as succesful as the Sinclair C5 electric bike.


Get yourself properly organised and I will register and donate, but until then I am tempted to walk away as I am sure many others have.



The doomsayer.

So a mere petition stating the effects the ID Cards would have on Individual lives and how the Scheme will not work in the long run.......then people signing to show they are not in favour of having their life's details put into a database for all personel that have access to view,only to be used against them at a later date..

Do you think this kind of petition will be signed by many!

...if you mean that people that don't want their IDs to be in a database will not want to sign a petition then of course I can see the logic of that. However, I doubt that many people are quite so paranoid as to believe that the government are going to send the thought police around to knock seven bells out of them for signing a petition, and people that sign petitions often don't give readable signatures or genuine information on their addresses for exactly this kind of reason. The government knows this - but then again they will get very worried if they think that a couple of million people are going to be very awkward about ID cards. They won't be worried about a few thousand militants when there are 76,000 people in jail right now. They know the general public will turn their back on a campaign run by extremists.

If someone threw-up on a reigstration officer do you think that the public's sympathy will be with the No2ID campaign or with the poor registration officer who was only doing her job?

Our little campaign didn't just use a petition. We used the following:-

1] Two demonstrations by 2000 people
2] Two petitions
3] Involvement from well known and respected environmentalists who were actually part of the government team on the evironment
4] Writing to MPs and local councillors
5] Candidates standing in local elections
6] Writing letters to the local papers
7] A site on Yahoo groups to co-ordinate research
8] Participation in forums by our competition to undermine their campaign
9] The gathering of masses of information on legal matters and similar development projects
10] The involvement of many volunteers in projects to promote alternative uses for the development land involved.

A lot of work by some very bright and committed people and I take my hat off to them as they worked their socks off and got the result we wanted in the face of very stiff and often abusive opposition from the football supporters in the town.

I can see you have a lot of expertise in this field so surely if you are not in favour of Id cards and wish to help in the campaigning then it may benefit others if you signed up and offered your help.

All credit to you for sticking around. And your expertise is much appreciated.

Comments below.



Agree, except I've not personally seen any need to split the group so far. Everyone seems to agree the situation is way too desperate to pursue one's own agenda.



Tricky one. Not much in the campaign is concrete except for the Cards and everyone already knows about them.
As Guy pointed out in another thread, we need an accessible metaphor for why Numbering the citizens will turn a bunch of mildly invasive databases into a complete dossier on our lives. Any ideas?



I think this is part of the No2ID constitution.



I do think you have a point here. People are distrustful of unknowns and it will help us to go out of our way to reassure them on first contact, whether it be media interviews, internet pledges, stalls...



Some measures require a few people eg cultivating relationships with TV execs. Others require hundreds eg demos.

I also think that at some point the campaign will grow beyond the capacity of a small, central No2ID team to effectively manage. But they are aware of that and are well advised.



Agree the website is the most important part of the campaign. Not sure chain letters work any more?

I agree with all your other points. Thanks for your contribution.

Militants and credibility: I have seen comments on this site that would involve physical assault of people just doing their job and even arson. I can't associate myself with such a site. I am in the electronics industry and know some experts in ID card technology - but I wouldn't point them to a site with so many cranks, extremists and conspiracy theorists so conspicuous on it. Too embarrassing. If people want to believe that President Kennedy was shot by someone behind a grassy knoll then that's fine by me, but they should be encouraged to keep these sorts of ideas to themselves - or they should express them on a site for the more extreme elements of the anti-ID card campaign.

Accessible metaphors: ask the members to come up with alternate names for the card and ID register (as pol tax vs. community charge), e.g. National Intrusion Register. Use the new names all the time. Try them out on "focus" groups of Joe Public like the PM would.

Avoid alignment: may be part of the No2ID constitution but if there is such a consitution why can't I find it on the web-site? Sonds like a good document to back up the sites credibility. If you are avoiding alignments why is George Galloway's RESPECT party mentioned? The papers consider him to be a Saddam Hussein apologiser. So does No2ID have more to gain from him or Goergeous George have more to gain from No2ID? Tony Benn and Glenda Jackson are despised by the press so not much to be gained by associating with them.

Focus on the concrete: campaigns don't stop bills in progress (like this one isn't). You have to wait so the public can see what you are complaining about. Unfortunately there will not be a specific date when things become concrete, but as more people are fingerprinted more people will become aware of what is going on. By the time of the next election there will be quite a lot of angry people out there - enough to lose Labour the election.

Use the net: organise the site so that people can actually add real research and contribute something concrete, not simply swap bizarre conspiracy theories. For example, put an area with all the countries of the globe listed and ask the members to find out what they can about these countries and their approach to ID cards for instance. I'm a global traveller so I could get you started with some help from my overseas colleagues. Email chain letters may not work for campaigns with limited public appeal - the members could send out 100 emails and only one person agrees with them, the other 99 thinking that their friend has lost the plot. But this is a campaign with broader appeal, so may work much better - in theory you could send out 10 emails and find 4 new members, who will then each find another 4 members and so on.


Hope you get your act together. Its an important campaign and I wish you all well.

Anyone can post on this forum. If you only want the official NO2ID line stick to the published parts of the website.



The constitution can be found in the about us section of the website.



You don't work for the Home Office by any chance?

Just what I thought Geraint, I had been watching his posts and have asked him to sign up like us, but he seems to avoid this and give criticism
I do give some structured comments but sometimes hide behind "guest" as being a woman I find does not seem to attract many postings to reply to my posts.. Yet many have done so when i have just used the guest mode..
If this man can give advise and stand by it, it would be nice if he would give his support by signing up and lending his expertise in the matter.

Neither can I. I must have missed those comments, but then the volume of postings has gone up recently.

Can you point these out so that they can be moderated properly ?

How did your campaign deal with the "football fanatics/crazies" who inhabit partisan football team supporter websites and forums ?



I belive theat the "Poll tax" analagy has been widely used, after all, the ID card fee is literally a true poll (medieval headcount) tax, on individuals, not kust on hiouseholds, like the Community Charge or Rates.



The press may "hate" such figures, but they do not ignore them

The recent Even Bigger Brother public meeting fetaured

Liberty Director Shami Chakrabarti
George Galloway MP
Lynne Featherstone(Liberal Democrat) MP
Dominic Grieve (Conservative) MP - Shadow Attorney General
Tony Benn

No other national campaign that I can think of has ever had such a broad spectrum of support across the political parties, not even the Stop the War or the Countryside Alliance campaigns etc.

The link to the list of supporting organisations has dissappeared from the NO2ID home page , but it is substantial and broad, but I agree there needs to be even more support.

http://www.no2id.net/about/supporters.php

There are also many large organisations which are constitutionally or politically unable to offer formal support to the NO2ID camapaign, but who seem to be just as worried about the Government's plans e.g. the large Trades Unions or the Conservative party.

When NO2ID launched, the media were neutral or supportive of NuLabour's ID card plans. Nowadays it is rare to see anything published or mentioned about the Identity cards Bill without the word "controversial" pre-pended to it.



So some extent, the NO2ID campaign is too net centric and needs more people on the streets.

The internet is full of conspiracy theories, and the ones expressed on the open forums here are sometimes with some merit, othertimes are just trolls, the same as with all other busy discussion forums..



The campaign has used the world class research made available by experts from one of the supporting organisations Privacy International on precisely this issue, which has done all that can be expected of it, by being quoted by Members of the House of Commons and the Lords in debates about the Identity Cards Bill, and in the national media, as a result of the NO2ID lobbying and briefings.

If it was just a matter of logical, reasoned, detailed, well researched argument and debate, then NO2ID would already have won. However the Government is using media spin, disinformation and ruthless politics, at tasxpayers expense, to force through their policy.



No ! That is the definition of email spam / junk mail - it is either filtered out semi-automaticlly or it creates more enemies than friends.

NO2ID does seem to be open to good "guerrilla marketing / viral advertising" ideas such as the humourous Flash animation Gilbert & Sullivan style song

http://eclectech.co.uk/clarkeidcards.php

which has been emailed to friends and weblogged very widely

There does not seem to be any pro Government ID Card scheme humour at all.



Thanks for taking the time to comment and criticise intelligently.

We'd love to be able to do that, except that there simply aren't any pro Government ID Card scheme forums.

Wherever you look online, the majority of people are sceptical or downright hostile towards the Government's ID card scheme either for reasons of principle, practicality or cost or all of these together.

e.g. Political Blogging pioneer Tom Watson Labour MP and junior Government whip was brave enough to try a "poll of bloggers"

http://www.tom-watson.co.uk/archives/2005/06/blog_readers_po.html

NO2ID and others have contributed to the official Public Consultations, but these contributions have all been ignored.

OK, well there were a large number of criticisms of my previous post. I will deal with as many of these as I can here and then take my leave of you all:

Firstly, I will tell you some personal details. I am 40 years old, married with two kids and I live in Swindon. I was educated at a comprehensive school in Wiltshire and went on to get a degree in electronic engineering. I work for a large semiconductor company providing technical and marketing support for telecoms devices. The same company also makes secure chips for smart cards and is in discussions with smart card providers regarding ID card technology. I therefore know of some people who are experts in the field of biometrics, secure card technology etc. I do not, and have never worked for the home office or any other government or Labour Party agency. My own politics are middle of the road and I am not affiliated to any political party, although I was a member of the Referendum Campaign at one time. I believe that President Kennedy was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald and no-one else was involved, and the Americans have landed a man on the moon. I am not a part of a conspiracy to trash the anti-ID card campaign, or indeed any other conspiracy. I do not believe that ID cards are part of some Government conspiracy, I believe they are merely an extension of statist socialism whereby the state seeks to encourage all members of society to conform to an idealised version of citizenship as defined by the (socialist) state. If you want Britain to become more like Sweden then you have nothing to fear from the Governments plans for ID cards, but if you value freedom of the individual then you should be against them.

The campaign that I have been involved in was aimed at stopping Swindon Town football club putting a new stadium in the middle of a residential area. As I said before I did not run this campaign but participated in it - I attended demos with my family, signed petitions, met the developers to inspect and challenge their plans, researched similar projects, wrote to local councillors and businesses, researched the legal aspects, volunteered to stand at the local council elections and analysed the impact on the area due to parking problems. I did not always agree with the organisers but they were very open to new ideas and within the group we had a very friendly working relationship. The campaign was 100% successful. I freely admit that this was a small local campaign involving perhaps 2000 active campaigners and the N02ID campaign would need to be about 1000x bigger than this, but so far I have been more impressed by the campaign organised by the people at Swindon Forest Protection Group.

You are quite correct to point out that the consitution for No2ID is posted on the web-site. I apologise for making a rash statement that I couldn't find it - I have posted a lot on this website recently and clearly it is sometimes better to look and learn rather than go off on one!

Spam is the sending of unsolicited emails to strangers. I was not proposing such a thing. I was proposing the sending of emails to friends and aquaintances that people know and might consider would react positively to the No2ID card campaign and also send such an email to their friends and aquaintances. I think you can understand that there is a clear difference between those two concepts. I hate spam but if a friend sends an email asking me to save the Amazon rain forest then I am obliged to listen politely even if I do nothing. No2ID should be popular but I have not received such an email.

You can direct me to the public part of the website but since the forum is also public and also the most active part then there is nothing to stop me looking into it or posting a lot of old nonsense. It is here that I (like most others) learn what No2ID is really like. Is it the refusenik equivalent of the IRA, planning to blow up the house of commons with a bag of fertilizer? Is it more like Fathers4Justice with a lot of crazy promiscuous mysogonists clad in Lycra? As a "normal" everyday, middle-of-the road kind of person, do I really want to associate with these people or not?

Regarding Tony Benn and George Galloway - yes the press hates them. But so does a large part of middle-England. If you are over 40 you may even remember tony Benn as a member of the Labour Cabinet during which time it became obvious he was a bit of a prat. I have said enough about Gorgeous George already. Like I say, do these people help or hinder the broader appeal of No2ID? Will No2ID become a huge organisation with 2million members sufficient to influence the policies of the main political parties or will it become a fringe group of extremists and career activists with no more credibility than the anti-globalisation campaigners? The Referendum Party avoided such career activists and appealed to middle England - that is why it became so big and UKIP then benefitted from that when Goldsmith died. Now the Tory party cannot ignore UKIP because so many former Tories now vote UKIP. The main political parties are only interested in the votes of middle England since it is middle England that determines the outcome of elections. Creating an organisation that appeals only to people on the fringes of society will have no influence. That is why NuLabour are now talking about the refuseniks as being on the outside of mainstream society - people with something to hide, career activists, cranks etc. They are trying to create the impression that the anti-ID campaign is not something that middle-England should get involved in because NuLabour only fear that they will lose the votes of middle-England.

There are many organisations that are politically or constitutionally unable to support No2ID you say. Why do you think that is? It is because they have been in this game longer than you and know how dangerous it is to link up with other organisations. No2ID does not have to link up with other organisations - it will need to be bigger than most of them to have real influence. The organisations like the unions, Conservatives, Liberals, UKIP are big enough to run their own campaigns. It is only the likes of George Galloway that benefit from latching onto the No2ID bandwagon. Be smart - instead of listing organisations that specifically support No2ID why not mention people and organisations that are against the national intrusion register? That really is a broad range of people (word it right and you can imply that they support No2ID)


You are quite correct that the campaign should be on the streets - but right now there are not enough of you and you have no money. The net is "free" and millions use it. Whats more those that use the net include a high proportion of intelligent, IT literate people that can readily understand how the technology could be misused. Spreading the word and the web-address by chain email (NOT Spam!) and participation in newsblogs like those on the Guardian website will get that web address widely known very quickly. There was a newsblog on ID cards on the Guardian web-site just a few days ago but I was the only one that was promoting the No2ID web address.


You cannot undermine the pro-card campaign because there isn't one, that is correct. But I suspect there will be in the near future. No one is really banging the table demanding to be positively identified - but supporters of the government will see about creating a pro-ID campaign just as there is a pro-EU campaign in reaction to UKIP.

I cannot find the research on ID cards in other countries on the web-site (the organisation of the web-site needs to improve), but in any case I was merely giving an example of possible user participation. Failing to involve the membership in some useful way will give the impression that you are arrogant and out of touch (just like Tony Blair).

The government may use spin to promote its case but for most intelligent people this will backfire. There are many reasonably intelligent people that understand the issues relating to ID cards and are not fooled. You need 2million of those people, not 2million people with serious mental health problems who wouldn't be able to fill in a polling card anyway. If the government uses spin so can No2ID. People don't understand "databases" so imply the information is on the card/with the card. Imply that the information is more extensive than the government is proposing etc etc.....


People believe in all sort of conspiracies but middle England tends to be resolutely down-to-earth and finds such ideas derisory. The forums don't need to be that open. The campaign should concentrate on the known facts not theories of what might be. Adverts for online casinos should be removed....

I would point out that neither "Stop the War" or the "Countryside Alliance" campaigns were successful - so comparing against them is a waste of time.

I haven't the patience to sift through where I saw the arson claim but I think it was in the "how to legally resist" forum somewhere near the middle (it may have been removed, especially now I have drawn attention to it!). Someone also claimed they would drink lots of beer and throw-up on the machine which was [1] childish [2] possibly an assault if any vomit got on a registration officer. The Sun would love it : "ID card looney vomits on disabled war veteran in registration office!"......

A demo with a hundred people in it would be derisory. In the Stop the War demo the BBC reported that it was credible because there were a lot more than 300,000 (i.e it wasn't just the usual malcontents...)

At the moment No2ID is starting to look more like Fathers4HJustice (I note that name similarity). But Fathers4Justice was not so far succesful even though the judiciary and the government agreed with it - the militancy of their campaign turned the government off. The originator of the idea then said he had "created a monster" and threw the nutters out.

I will not associate myself with a fringe group that could prove to be embarrassing or dangerous so I will leave you alone now to make your own way. Sorry if I upset anyone - I wish you all well (even the nutters), but please don't hurt anyone in your campaign as it will do No2ID immeasurable harm. If you feel my criticism might embarrass No2ID I can understand that you may want to delete them - this is fine by me. I will check back in a few months to see how No2ID has turned out and if it is a more moderate group with broad appeal then I will join up, help out and contribute some cash.

....with reference to my post above I have just seen nine posts on your site which have been viewed 135 times and the title is "Mark of the Beast". This claims that Tony Blair is the devil incarnate, the ID card is the mark of the beast and when we all have one the end of the world will be upon us. Of all the responses it is only the wording that has been challenged! No one has challenged the basic soundness of this theory. Perhaps you should inform the priests at Westminster Cathedral as Tony Blair is a regular there.

You are all completely nuts.

By the way, I was right about the arson comments. It is in the "How to resist" forum on page 2 near the bottom - Firebombing and ransacking of registration stations. Given the "Book of Revelations" theories on your site perhaps some brimstone would be in order?

You will also notice that there are relatively few participants in threads like that. Has it occurred to you that most people on this forum just ignore them and cannot be bothered arguing with religious fundamentalists? Either you are very, very new to online forums or you are trolling. If you are not personally capable of separating the wheat from the chaff and recognising that individuals on a public forum do not all have the same beliefs, opinions or thoughts, I suggest that you stick to the mainstream media and avoid the dangerous world of the internet.

Damn I've been sussed

However, I do share your concerns doomsayer; I've given up reading the more riduiclulous posts, although I suppose, it provides space for a little spleen-venting, demonstrating to anyone reading, the anger people feel about the cards. I'm not sure how beneficial it might be. Even the 'How to resist' thread seems a little counter productive to me.

Not so very different to many other NO2ID supporters then !



Been there, done that, but always felt that these are not very infuential,



Lucky you ! The "developers" of the Identity Cards Project are hiding behind Government secrecy claims of "commercial confidentiality" (even though there is no official procurement process in progress), and have refused to publish even a moderately detailed list of technical requirements, let alone a detailed specification that can be properly scrutinised technically or costed sensibly.

The former Home Secretary has rubbished detailed submissions to the offical consultations , and the current one has been trying to bully the London School of Economics Idnetity Project for implying that , on the basis of what has not been included in the Government's vague Regulatoru Impact Assessment "costs", that the true cost of the plan could, depending on various assumptions be double or triple what the government has been claiming.



It is relatively easy to guage how much a football stadium is likely to cost, given the large number of them that have been built round the world. There is simply nothing on the scale and complexity and potential security and privacy problems of the Biometric National Identity Register, anywhere else in the world.



Not strictly comparable in a national campaign, but NO2ID has written to all Members of Parliament and the House of Lords, the Welsh Assembly, Scotttish Parliament etc. and several Local Councils have passed resolutions in support. There is obviously much more to do.



Yes, NO2ID have done that , and so have supporting organisations such as the Law Society (which represents Solicitors), Liberty Human Rights, Privacy International , etc, with legal opinions from leading Human Rights QCs etc.



Not possible for a non-partisan umbrella campaign like NO2ID, which has supporters in all political parties.



NO2ID have tried to analyse the impact of the ever shifting emphasis that the Government has placed on the various alleged "statutory purposes" put forward in the Identity Cards Bills.



Exactly my impression of the NO2ID Campaign organisers - friendly and competent.



It is certainly the intention of NO2ID to grow far bigger, but see the comments on size of organisations below.



But as you said earlier, you have only just come across the NO2ID campaign recently, so it is unlikely that any of your friends and aquaintances have either. If you do sign up as a NO2ID supporter you will get an email newsletter, usually weekly, unless there are fast moving developments in the campaign, which aims not be a burden on people's email boxes, and which can easily be unsubscribed to.



Obviously not, but if you read a sample of most of the comments, even on this forum, you will see a lot normal people who are angry and passionate, or almost in despair at the Government's policy.



NO2ID does not have to be as large as that, and it already influences the policies of the main political parties or vice versa.

NO12ID are not trying to be a Government party - only 22% of the electorate, just over 5 million people voted in the NuLabour Government.

An active membership of 2 million people would be more than the entire membership of the Conservative (about 400,000), Labour (about 300,000) and Liberal Democrat (about 250,000) parties put together !



Too early to say. If you believe in the issue, then it is up to people like you and me to prevent it from becoming so.



You may have missed it on the supporters pages of the main website, but the UK Independence Party is a fully signed up supporter of the NO2ID campaign.



Partly that, but partly the inertia of large organisations with their own internal politics and bickering. It is astonsihing that the Conservative Party went all "wobbly" on ID Cards, despite what should be core Tory values of individual freedom, liberty and a smaller government and less powerful bureaucracy. Now they seem a bit more united, perhaps they will formally endorse the NO2ID campaign.

Similarly it has taken the Trades Unions a long time to get around to thinking (they have a cumbersome process for new issues to float up from their grassroots to their central bueaucratic policy committees) about the implications of the National Identity Register as proposed, and how it will directly affect their members, especilaly those who actually work in the Public Sector or the IT Industries - 10 years in prison for going on strike or making an inevitable IT software configuration error for "making it more difficult, or impossible to download data" from the National Identity Register. Now 3 of the largest unions have clearly stated their opposition to the scheme, admittedly only after the General Election.



So how would you advise dealing with the issue of the British National Party ? Their last General Election manifesto was firmly against ID cards, but any support or oxygen of publicity for them, is likely to lose more support from many other parties and organisations.



Is it better to get a few mentions of the web address in the still relatively unpopular Guardian weblog, or to get some supportive articles and opion pieces published in the newspaper itself ?

There is an ongoing struggle with the far more popular BBC News Online website, to ensure that when they run "balanced" ID card stories, they remember to include a link to NO2ID as well as the Home Office or just the main political parties. This is slowly getting better.



But won't people just see such a pro-ID card campaign simply as even more NuLabour "astroturfing" (artifical "grassroots" support) and spin ?



You would have thought that to be the case already, given how every single one of the claims about how this particular proposed ID card scheme would address, terrorism, illegal working, identity theft etc. have been shown to be false, when examined at any level of detail.

It is not normal "intelligent" people who have to be convinced, it is those in political power who have to be influenced.



The press and media do that already e.g. the misreporting of the Governmet's plans to sell data on the National Identity register to private companies.



True, but they are automated spam, and some of them do get through - it is a fact of life of all online discussion forums.



I was only making the point that even large membership . organisations such as those, who have mounted enormous street protests, have a much narrower spread of opinion groups than the NO2ID Campaign currently does.



I have to disagree. If the point of the demo is as a media event, in order to generate press and tv coverage, even a small demo can get as much coverage as a very large one.



Phones4U etc. is an increasinly common and easily understood modern style of brand name shorthand



True enough, except, except, that the Government has actually now announced some concessions to do with Child custody. This may have more to do withthe fact that David Blunkett is embroiled in such matters personally and is now in charge of the DWP including the Child Support Agency, but you have to wonder if the publicity generated by the idiotic stunts did actually influence the media obsessed NuLabour political commisars.



Neither will I, but it is wrong to categorise the NO2ID Campaign as such.



Please come back ! You are more in tune with the majority of NO2ID supporters than you think !

I agree this can be a problem for us.

Comments that advocate violence to people and property ought to be dealt with by moderators. Please point them out.

I am embarrassed for the organisation when I see postings by the lunatic fringe. But this is a forum, it is not an expression of our collective view. I am rather more embarrassed by out of date material on the main site that has escaped hoovering.

We perhaps ought to have a stronger statement that comments on the forum represent the opinions of individual posters, and there are arguments for firmer moderation, but making it into Pravda is not a possibility. Short of closing the forum altogether--in which case we would lose important discussions like this one--it cannot be made safe.

The Conservative Party as a whole has pledged to scrap the ID cards scheme as shown on the home page of their web-site, regardless of their upcoming leadership battle. I feel sure that with the last election having been close and with millions of people angry about ID cards it is a foregone conclusion that the Tories will win next time, and that is without factoring in a deteriorating economy and gradual waning in support of the Labour Party. The only way that Labour could possibly retrieve the situation is for Gordon Brown to take over as PM and scrap the card.

I will be voting Tory next time and I hope you will all be too.


http://www.conservatives.com/

First of all a technical matter. I have used forums on many occassions and whilst some start as an exercise in freedom of speech what often happens is that they become a means by which people can use them as a means of broadcasting extremist views. Racists are a particular problem and once you get racist rants on the forum there is no option but to start restricting access. The forums I have used restrict access by one or two means: [1] Items for submission are moderated before they appear in the forums [2] Comments can only be posted by registered users. Users must register by providing an email address (those that are particularly protective of their ID will no doubt already have an email address that doesn't give their name away). A password is sent to the email address so you only get the password if you have given a genuine email. People writing comments in the forums that are "off message" can be politely warned via a private email and persistent offenders can be denied further access by having their registration deleted (they will be able to attack the forums again by setting up a new email but they soon get bored with this).

Anyway, I was wondering about the comment made that the majority of the people attached to No2ID were ordinary people with mainstream views(sorry, shouldn't have used the word "normal" in my previous post, as the antonym of this is pejorative). I decided to see what I could do to prove this. So I went to the members list and there are some people that have linked to private web-sites. Now I freely admit that the registered users are not necessarily representative of the membership of No2ID and those that have linked to web-sites are not even representative of the registered members, but in the end it is all I have to go on.

So who do we find in the registered users that have blogs or linked to web-sites? Well to start with we have a lady that is a Druid and a man that is in the process of transforming into being a woman but isn't quite there yet. I can quite see why these people would not want their information on an ID card lest it caused them to be derided at the post office. People could ask them nasty and hurtful things like "Do you need an NVQ to become a druid?" or "Why does it say 'None of the above' next to 'gender'?". There is certainly a case for limiting the information on ID cards to take account of people that live alternative lifestyles and don't wish to have members of the public pointing and laughing at them in the street. It is not, however, a reason for scrapping the idea altogether.

Next we have a large group of people that believe in various conspiracies including one that seems to believe that "The Matrix" may have been based on a true story. Once again they are entitled to their opinion but then again since these people have started off on the basis that the whole of democratic society is a corrupt sham that was concocted on the playing fields of Eton its a bit of a cheek of them to pick and mix which parts of modern society they are going to relate to and which they are not. If I go to the local library I need to provide ID before I can take a book out. No problem with that. Now you could argue that the government is only saying that if you partake of the services of the state then you must consider yourself a part of the community created by the state and freely identify yourself to that community. If you don't partake of any of the services of the state and prefer not to be a part of that commuity then you don't really need to have the card. So travellers and environmentalists won't need one unless they have the audacity to claim unemployment benefit from a state they claim to detest. Once again I find that if you use the services of the state then you must at least be prepared to show an genuine ID. There is a point to be made here that people should be able to choose to exclude themselves from the state entirely if they so wish, but this is only tenuously related to the subject of ID cards.

The next largest group of identifiable registered members have linked to web-sites giving a view no more controversial than the Forest of Arden is a nice place. Nothing wrong with that. Unfortunately this group of people that have linked to mainstream sites are in a small minority.

Then we come down to Mr GunControl. Mr GunControl likes guns. Handguns in particular. He doesn't like authority much. He believes that the citizen should be armed to the teeth to protect himself/herself from people in authority. It follows from this theory, that faced with a traffic warden giving him a ticket for parking on a double yellow it would be perfectly acceptable for Mr Guncontrol to take a double-barrelled shotgun and blow the brains of this poor lady all over the front of Hallmark Cards. It has to be said that Mr GunControl is a rather dangerous individual. Perhaps it would be a good idea if society knew who he was. In fact it might be a good idea if he was tagged with a radio transmitter and kept under constant video surveillance. Mr Geraint Bevan expressed the view that the internet is a dangerous place - with people like Mr GunControl broadcasting his views to potentially like minded individuals it certainly is.

Of course the internet has been a dangerous place for some time. It has been popular with paedophiles. Which brings me on to Ian Huntley, the Soham murderer. I have two children, one of whom is only 5 years old. The idea that there are people like Ian Huntley out there that might want to do my kids serious harm keeps me awake at night. Ian Huntley used multiple IDs to keep the authorities in the dark about what he got up to. He was therefore able to get himself a job in a school so he could prey on young girls. A birth certificate is all you need to establish a believable false ID- you could easily steal one. Then the police and criminal records would have no value in protecting children from paedophiles. A biometric ID Card would stop that. People say you could forge them but that isn't easy - the chips on the card are extremely secure (Cloning a card might be possible, as it is with credit cards, but that would only give you two cards proving exactly the same ID which would hardly be useful). In any case the biometric on the card, the individual and in the NIR would all have to match or a forged card would be detected. An organised crime gang might be able to do it (if they though it was worthwhile) but not an individual criminal or child sex pervert.

Some have said that people who are HIV+ wouldn't want that information in the NIR where anyone could see it. But perhaps we should be able to see it, especially if we are in the NHS. Perhaps when my sons grow up they should be able to take a girls ID and check to see if she is carrying a health warning! But seriously, I can imagine a flu pandemic that is killing millions of people spreading to the UK and having a register of people that have been innoculated or had the disease and survived could be absolutely key in limiting the spread of the disease.

Some people (including myself) have said that it wouldn't stop terrorism. Of course it wouldn't. But it might stop terrorist hoaxes which are far more frequent than the attacks themselves. A hoax has no value if the ordinary people have been able to go about their usual business, subject to only a bag search and an ID check. People who can't get into Lakeside shopping centre because they left their ID at home might be inconvenienced but I guess they will realise it is for their own safety. I can see why Tony Blair would be in favour as it is a question of his own personal safety - allowing the police to positively identify people that have security clearance in the presence of VIPs is important (although I am not sure I want to pay £300 to keep that git safe...)

I don't think it will reduce crime in the first intance, because you can only reduce crime by reducing the number of people prepared to commit crime. However, at the moment the police only have photgraphic records of people that have already committed serious offences which obviously makes it difficult to pin down the identity of a criminal with no record from eye witnessess. If the police had the possibility of using photographs of the entire population together with other biometrics then it should be an easy matter to locate the person responsible. Of course this has to be carefully controlled or it is open to abuse with innocent people linked to crimes they didn't commit on the say-so of a poor witness.

I don't think that it will reduce illegal immigration. But who cares? If you can only get access to public services by using the card then the illegal immigrants won't be able to obtain services they aren't entitled to. If they live and work here and pay their own way doing jobs British people won't do but not taking anything out of the system then good luck to them. Eventually they will have to go home. They don't bother me.


So the more I have read on this web-site and the more I have read about the people that contribute to this web-site the less certain I have become that ID cards and the NIR is a bad idea. Sure I can still see a lot of problems that are certainly not easy to dismiss - the legislation is too wide ranging, 24/7 compulsion to carry the card is unacceptable except in times of national crisis, it will be inconvenient and expensive, it could be open to abuse by an incumbent government intent on extending its powers. These are not minor matters. But in the main I now find myself taking a more pragmatic view and can see that the dangers of having an ID-Card are counter-balanced by the dangers of not having one. I am not as strongly against the card as I was just a few days ago.

Perhaps the government just hasn't done a very good job of selling the ID-Card concept - it is complex and the government has been in a rush. The open forums at No2ID and the peculiarities of the registered members seem to be doing the job for them. Perhaps Bill (who posted in this forum earlier) was right when he said that the forum[s] were counter-productive to the No2ID campaign.

I guess the charming Mr Bevan will be back to accusing me of being a spy for the Home Office or of being a "troll". A bit paranoid perhaps but fair enough. I'm not here to spread propaganda for the other side of the argument so if the moderators want to delete this post then of course they are welcome to do so. You are running a campaign not an exercise in free speech. But it does emphasise my point that the lack of credibility in No2ID because of the open forums and the registered members actually helps to subvert your cause.


I find myself remaining to be convinced by either argument.


Yours sincerely, The Doomsayer.