WRITTEN ON May 21st, 2005 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Uncategorized

Do you dread that moment when you’re summoned for scanning, or fined for refusal, or charged £90 for that card you never wanted? Do you wonder “What if I refuse?” or “How many others would?”

Well, it may never happen of course. Democracy has not yet spoken. Good technical arguments, or plain common sense may yet prevail.

But if you fear it may come to a conflict of conscience you should look at the interesting use to which Pledgebank is now being put.

Pledgebank was set up to achieve critical mass for small voluntary projects (“if ten other people will pledge a tenner to repaint the cricket pavilion then I will too”). But some mischiefmaker* has pledged that he’ll refuse to register for an ID card if THREE MILLION others do. This has the organiser** sweating a bit, as Pledgebank was never designed to send out 3m emails at a time, and is barely in beta testing. Anyway – sign up. Only 2.999m to go!

Perhaps we need a corporate pledge, along the lines “I’ll deploy an alternative ID system which respects the best laws and principles of identity we can muster if 3m people would take it up.”
*Cheers Stef
**Tom