Report on London ID cards meeting

Computer Weekly reports on the ID card meeting held last week on the 19th May. To quote from the article by Simon Moores:

Never had I seen a pillar of government policy look so demonstrably fragile and flawed. Neatly dissected by the opening arguments of the shadow home secretary and then buried alive by the experts who followed, we were offered little or no reason to believe that an identity card would be proportionate, cost effective or even capable of addressing the problems surrounding terrorism or illegal immigration.

Note that Blunkett was invited but the government did not send anyone to this meeting to defend their policy, despite the Shadow Home Secretary, Lib Dems, privacy and security experts all being there.

The article concludes:

The population has high expectations of identity cards, driven by fears over illegal immigration and terrorism. Sadly, the facts of the matter are, that given an avalanche of facts and figures to the contrary delivered by experts from all sides at the LSE’s public meeting last week, Blunkett’s ID card argument is specious and really not worth the plastic it may be printed on.

I recommend people read the whole thing.