Re: UK Identity Card
 

Just about every "westernized" country - includung the USA is split down the middle... NOTHING gets done now..

Re: UK Identity Card
 

Well they were the ones that constructed this threat of total annihilation around every corner. The fact is that while there is a real threat from terrorism, it does not require that our entire way of life has to change, our civil liberties are "revoked" and so on.

Re: UK Identity Card
 

ID cards have sod all to do with stopping fraud. If they did, then fraud rates would be lower in Italy, France, Spain and Germany than in the UK. They're not.

Compulsory ID cards are an excuse for the police to stop anyone at any time to make sure they are carrying their ID card - it's an abolition of the right to walk down the street unmolested by the state. This is exactly what happens in France if you're "funny looking" in the eyes of some thick flic.

Plus you have to change your registered address with the cops every time you move, which is a) none of their gdmf business and b) a hassle.

Re: UK Identity Card
 

Dead right. In fact, what it does, rather neatly, is completely reverse your relationship with the state. Before people like Mao and Blair introduced identity papers, you could walk down the street without having to prove who you were. If you were stopped by an agency of the state, they had to prove their identity to you. This is why police wear numbers. When we are forced to have identity papers we have to prove our right to be on the street.

In other words:

Before identity papers = the state belongs to you.
After identity papers = you belong to the state.

It is a fundamental shift away from long-held Anglo-Saxon rights and customs, towards the continental system of the Big State. According to Privacy International Britain is already "an endemic surveillance society" in the same bracket as China and Russia, and this will only make things worse.

Re: UK Identity Card
 

Britain will never be a police state.

Re: UK Identity Card
 

Sounds like wishful thinking to me. I recall a Tory MP in the House of Commons once during PMQs who called out that Britain was a police state. Blair stopped what he was saying and went nuts about it. Many would say that he doth protest too much.

No, it's not a police state right now, but decisions that are being made in Britain are not in the interests of civil liberties. We categorically do not need an identity papers system, and we do not need to have more CCTVs than Russia or China. They are unnecessary, encourage a lazy and passive attitude to fighting crime and make the general public feel uncomfortable in their own high street.

I don't know how many of the 1000 people that leave Britain every day do so because of some of these reasons, but to a good few they are at least part of their calculations.

Re: UK Identity Card
 

We will soon be living in a world where everything you do is tracked, and depending on what you do, you will be monitored accordingly. If you go on the internet and search for something like plutonium for a college project, you may be placed on a special list for extra surveillance, maybe have officer come to ask you why you were doing what you were doing. Everything you do will go through filters where they will calculate your risk of becoming a possible terrorist or a criminal, and they will have watch lists of such people. It will be a world where if you differ from the standard "norms" of behavior in any way, you will be asked why by intimidating officials and persuaded to behave "normally". They already have no-fly lists in America where people who criticize the White House have been placed on for no good reason.

Re: UK Identity Card
 

And your source for that garbage is .... ?????
Half of the US criticizes the white House ..

Re: UK Identity Card
 

I saw a TV programme last year with an old lady who was on various no-go lists because she organised some protests against the Iraq War.

Re: UK Identity Card
 

You forget to allow for the incompetence levels of the Government.

US and of course to a lessor extent the UK can not even control its own borders.

What is it 3000 or so enter every day without any controls, and many more legally without very little real scrutiny. Including of course the recent 6 who wanted to do their own Jihad.

I think Ray may be wrong about the percentage criticizing the White House, GW I believe set a new record last week for approval rating.

Re: UK Identity Card
 

If you think Britain is even anywhere remotely close to a police state then you are very misguided.

Of all the countries in the world the UK is the one where the police have least autocratic powers, regardless of what certain areas of the media may have you think.

While you may wish to believe we are on the verge of a totalitarianist regime the average British Citizen is very much free to do whatever the want free from interference from the police as long as what they do isn't detrimental to others welfare. No other country puts as many brakes and checks on the activities of it's police forces.

Re: UK Identity Card
 

Of course ... I bet it was in THE SUN as well ....
You can do better ....

Re: UK Identity Card
 

This is factually wrong. If you refer to the charts produced by Privacy International you will see that Britain is one of the worst offenders in terms of the privacy afforded to its citizens.

The problem we have in Britain is that the general public simply cannot conceive of any other type of governance because it has been so stable for so long. Few nations can boast stable liberal government for as long as Britain. The failure to conceive of any potential danger is our greatest threat, because it allows the erosion of civil liberties by stealth.

Privacy International, privacy rankings 2006:

Consistently upholds human rights standards:

1 Germany
2 Canada

Significant protections and safeguards:

3 Belgium
3 Austria
4 Greece

Some safeguards but weakened protections:

5 Argentina
5 Hungary
6 France
6 Poland
6 Portugal
6 Cyprus
7 Finland
8 Italy
8 Luxembourg
8 Latvia
8 Estonia
8 Malta

Systemic failure to uphold safeguards:

9 Denmark
9 Czech Republic
9 Ireland
9 Slovakia
9 Lithuania
9 New Zealand
10 Spain
10 Australia
11 Slovenia
11 Netherlands
12 Sweden
12 Israel

Extensive surveillance societies:

13 United States
14 Thailand
14 Philippines

Endemic surveillance societies:

15 United Kingdom
16 Singapore
16 Russia
17 Malaysia
17 People's Republic of China (Mainland only)

Re: UK Identity Card
 

I know how many bloody hoops I have to jump through just to get a friggin warrant these days....

Re: UK Identity Card
 

I think these guys are referring to stuff like CCTV and workplace monitoring. They go into much more detail on their website. LIke I said earlier, the UK is not a police state, but there are civil liberties problems slowly arising here. And other places as well of course - it's hardly just the UK, but for some reason it does score quite badly on the privacy test.