NEWS
Thousands of UK citizens have registered their interest in getting their very own ID card.
According to the Home Office, to date 10,000 people have asked for further information on applying for a card through the DirectGov site.
The first ID cards were issued to foreign nationals living in the UK from last November.
A wider rollout will follow this year, with residents of the Greater Manchester area getting first dibs on applying for a card.
From early next year, the scheme will be extended to cover those living in the wider North West area.
The cards will be rolled out to the rest of the UK on a voluntary basis from 2011/12.
(Photo credit: Home Office)
Comments
There are 13 comments. Join the discussion
1. Anthony Hunt
So many things require ID - from nightclubs to postoffice mail collection.
If, like my wife, you don't have a photo driving license, you're stuffed.
She can get one of these and stop having to explain to total strangers the medical reasons she can't have a driving license even though she's a qualified driver.
2. Gary Stimson
I wonder how many of those 10,000 (spambots and stooges) will go ahead and get themselves fingerprinted when they realise what they are signing up for. It's a lifetime of fees and penalties; and a lifetime of surveillance and data trafficing.
Once on the big computer, you can never get off. And what if one day the computer says "No"?
Anthony, for £10 your wife can get a CitizenCard instead. She doesn't need to submit to state control.
3. anonymous
Considering there's no information on the card that's going to change, why does it expire at all?
4. karen challinor
the card expires because your facial biometric changes over time
in short after ten years you no longer look like your photo so you need a new one
and as Mr Stimson says there are many alternative forms of identification that don't mean you have to hand over your life history, sign up to a regime where you need to keep the information up to date for life or face huge fines and submit to a lifetime of having your movement and expenditure monitored and sometimes questioned like a common criminal
5. Drew Stephenson
Come on Silicon, you can do better than this. 10,000 people asking for further information is not the same as 10,000 people wanting to sign up. That's either a lazy, prograndised or sensationalist headline and your audience expects better.
6. J C Walker
Ah, but what's on the database? If your address isn't there, why the massive penalty for failing to notify a change of address? If your address is there, but not on the card, what else, possibly gleaned from one of the many other government databases, is stashed away on file?
7. Radical Meldrew
Er, is it down to my failing eyesight or is the card holder's address not actually printed on the card. I assume the holder's address has been added to the on-board microchip, because if not, this card in itself will be of limited value as a practical means of identification. Even your humble photocard driving licence, which is already held by tens of millions of people in the country, includes the holder's address printed on the front panel.
If the home address is held on the microchip only, that means that every single establishment throughout the land that may require the production of an ID card as part of it's routine business, will have to have a card reader installed on it's premises. What happens if the chip on the card fails, will the holder have to pay for a replacement? How long will this process take? What does one do in the meantime to prove their ID?
The more I read about this ID card scheme, the more sceptical I become that it will be able to deliver any practical or worthwhile benefits to ordinary Jo citizen.
8. anonymous
Looks great! I am a UK citizen, keen to obtain one - and I am certain that I am not the only one. Most European countries do it, why not Britain?
9. GALLEYSLAVE
TEN THOUSAND IDIOTS WANTING AN I.D CARD
TEN THOUSAND VILLAGES IN ENGLAND WELL, EVEN AN IDIOT HAS TO BELONG!
10. Chris Tolmie
We are sleep walking towards a police state. In a free country I should not need to show my ID, and in the rare cases that I do, I use my passport (I already pay for this and its periodic renewal). It is important to understand why governments want us to have ID cards - not just think about any convenient use. The same goes for the intrusive use of CCTV by invisible security guards. Just think what may happen if extreme political parties get into power . . . .
11. Hoover
Stockholm syndrome. People increasingly tend to trust and believe everything the state tells them.
So they believe that their data is secure, that the card is necessary in order to keep us safe, and that it cannot be misused by those in power.
In a few years, when there have been multiple data breaches, and the information has been used by spiteful bureaucrats to persecute individuals or even groups of people, I suppose people might regret being so enthusiastic.
12. mikeymike96
thank u
13. george-london
For Chris Tolmie (comment 10) and to comment 3 from anonymous as well as everybody else that beleives that ID cards are wrong: The information on the ID cards is already on passports as well as a million other places that it will ALWAYS is in danger of being misused! The point is that UK is the only western county on the universe without a constitution!!!!! How backwards is that? As UK citisens you have no constitutanly drafted rights except the rights in the EU human right act! And ID is bothering you??? Who are the idiots????? And because you will have and ID card the state will persecute you??? The state persecutes you already by keeping most UK citizens on benefits and keeping a DNA database and taking the power from parents to control and dissipline their kids so the police has now got the right to arrest your kids and take their DNA for life! And you worried about ID cards? Really? Who are the idiots? and also, if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear! But obviously all of you opposed you have something to hide!