Public “can’t wait” to lose personal data

Thursday, November 6th, 2008

The public can’t wait to get their hands on ID cards, apparently. Come 2012 we’ll have to carry them, but Home Secretary Jacqui Smith told the BBC today that she has people, “coming up to me and saying that they don’t want to wait that long.”

 Well, I’m in no hurry, personally. The longer I can keep my biometric data out of the Government’s hands, the longer I can keep it from being accidentally left on a bus, in a pub, stolen on a laptop or dropped somewhere en route by a courier. Never mind the privacy implications of having to hand over finger prints and a photograph to the Home Office, just to leave the country – can they be trusted to hang on to them?

 To me, it feels like the Labour party is urgently attempting to rush these cards into circulation in order to make it harder for the Conservatives to cancel the scheme when they come to power in 2010. Remember, Labour is the only party in favour of the scheme; the Conservatives have promised to cancel it, and the Lib Dems have called it a “laminated poll tax”.

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