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Make that 13 people now - I got refused today at Manchester airport. I thought I was up to date on this legislation - I knew of the EU ruling from...
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Talkback
ID cards spell the end of liberty in the UK, as they open every individual to tracking and persecution by any future liess consensual UK government body. Every terrorist in Madrid carried an ID card....
I would cheerfully pay £2500 to opt out, but sadly I would also be opting out of driving a car, going on holiday, getting treated by my doctor or (by 2013) withdrawing cash from my bank account. Ultimately I imagine I will be one of many forced to go to jail for daring to care about liberty.
You are already tracked far more effectively and with far less 'official scrutiny' than may be given to ID cards.
From the milisecond you turn on your mobile phone & it connects your position can be located, depending on the number of masts that could be measured in miles or inches, you have no control over this, yet this sort of info is given to police forces.
Similarly with a credit card, you leave a track of where you have been every time you use it, and what is worse this can then be used to constuct a model of you & your buying habits.
Likewise a store loyalty card only has one use, to keep you comming back to that store, it allows the company providing the card to obtain free info about what goods are being marketed well, and allows them to target discounts at you, for you to buy something that you don't really need, but that 'the discount was just too good!'. All for the discount that they would provide to the staff anyway.
Walking around in a mjor town or city there are camera's these days, in many places these are connected to automatic face matching programs to detect known criminals.
Therefore to stop these infringements on your 'personal freedom' I take it you do not have a mobile phone, credit or debit card or even a bank account as trnsactions through that can be traced, you do not use a phone as it can be bugged and whenever you walk around on the streets, if for some reason you have to enter an area with camera's, you wear a paper bag over your head to hide your ID? No? It must be because you don't really care that that much because of the ease of use and the added safety to your everyday life that these items bring, isn't it possible that an ID card will also provide a similar feeling of safety and ease of use?
As & when an ID card comes into force (as it will do, if Tony & his cronies ever want us to fully enter the EU) for the majority of use, people are going to ask for your ID, look at the picture on it, compare it with your and accept that you are who you say you are, it is only when this card is processed electronically that a trace will be left.
I agree with the many detractors that say ID cards will not decrease the threat of terrorism, it will not in the slightest, however in the current day & age proving your ID is becomming more essential, carrying your passport round with you is bulky and frankly a pain in the proverbial, as for the photo driving licences they are a joke as the vast majority of people still do not have them and they are worthless without their paper counterpart.
The introduction of a national ID card can only do us good in the long term, panicing about a repressive government is frankly ludicrous, when was the last time that the UK has had a repressive governemnt that did the things that you suggest may happen if we introduce ID cards? I also firmly believe that the carrying of the ID card should be mandatory, punishable by fine through to prison for repeat offenders; but that the cards should be free for their initial issue (if one is lost and need replacing then in that case the person responsible should pay)
Putting it in perspective you are afraid of 'Big Brother', but couldn't really give a damn about 'Big Corporations' who hold more data on you, where you go and what you spend your money on, than 'Big Brother' would or could ever know!
This just gives people a sense of false conditioning. That ID card is not going to make us safe when the corruption lies within our own governments. They will want people to give out all their information, then some hacker will get access to your information. People do this on the internet, and have done it to me. Some of these people have violent tendancies, and then they find out where you live. Less government, more God, please! The banks wants us to get micrchipped, and they are beastly. Read Revelation in the older Christian bibles. It tells you, you will not be able to buy and sell without this mark. Hey the debtor is a slave to the lender, as it says in Proberbs. First they stick us with this tag, then the chip, and who knows what else they will tag on us like a bunch of dogs for the global banking establishment.....For thy merchants were the great man of the earth, and by their sorceries were all nations deceived. Now this says nations, not people. So protect yourself from the merchants!!