WRITTEN ON November 20th, 2008 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Data nitwittery, Foundation of Trust, What do we want?
Oh look – this outbreak of sanity in Scotland continues:
The Scottish Parliament has voted against the UK Government’s plans to introduce ID cards. MSPs backed a Scottish Government motion stating the scheme would not increase security or deter crime, while raising concerns about civil liberties. Scots Community Safety Minister Fergus Ewing said the estimated £5bn needed for ID cards should be spent elsewhere.
That’s the stingy £5bn version. When you factor in the costs for everyone else (not just the Home Office) then we’re talking £15-20bn (say it ain’t so, not-yet-Sir James). The old MoD rule of thumb was to take the original cost estimate and multiply by 3.14159. Same difference.
Funny how devolution (whatever one’s views about the desirability of the Union) introduces a competition in ideas. Along with the lashings of smug rhetoric there’s quite a lot of common sense that slips out.
Next thing to watch for, I’m told, is the Welsh abandoning this nonsense about central databases for children.
But, I thought that Scotland had rolled-out the ITSO smartcards (aka ODPM Citizen/Entitlement Cards) more widely than England and had also installed lots of ITSO card readers.
I believe that these ITSO cards are designed to provide many of the “benefits” (to government) and “sanctions” (to card holders) that were later inherited by the government’s crazy ID project.
ps. It has been good to discover that my ITSO smartcard bus-pass really does work on London buses – working as a basic “flash & go” card. (ie. without any tracking via the ITSO database.)
At present, this ITSO card costs me five Pounds every two years for the “passport standard” photos, plus time, plus phone calls, plus postage. It costs my local council considerably more. I hear that its security features have already been “cracked.”