The government's ID card project ran into more trouble today, as the scheme was snubbed by airline pilots and the Scottish government.
Lawyers for the British Airline Pilots' Association (Balpa) said they are examining whether there are legal grounds to challenge Home Office plans to force pilots to take up the cards from autumn this year.
Pilots are willing to lose their jobs rather than accept an ID card, Balpa told the Home Office in response to consultation over the introduction of the cards, that finished on Friday, 13 February.
The consultation is on the Identity Cards Act Secondary Legislation that will need to be approved by parliament before ID cards can be issued to airside workers and pilots.
It comes as the Scottish government supported calls for the government to cancel the UK rollout of the £4.7bn scheme, adding that they present an "unacceptable threat to citizens' privacy and civil liberties".
Scottish minister for community safety, Fergus Ewing, said in a statement: "In the midst of a deep recession, with more job losses announced nearly every day, it simply beggars belief that the UK government is pressing ahead with its costly National Identity Scheme."
Balpa believes it may be able to mount the legal challenge on the grounds that the Identity Cards Act 2006 indicated that the take-up of ID cards would be voluntary for UK citizens.
A spokesman for Balpa told ZDNet UK's sister site, silicon.com: "There is a strong feeling that ID cards do nothing to increase security and that [pilots] are not going to be used as guinea pigs in this way."
The spokesman said: "We have our lawyers looking at whether we could mount a legal challenge on the basis that ID cards were introduced on the basis they would be voluntary. This is not the case if you have to take an ID card or lose your job."
In its submission to the Home Office, Balpa said that forcing pilots to have ID cards "is an affront to the people who for years have been, and continue to be at the forefront in the battle against terrorist outrages".
Silicon.com recently revealed that there are no readers in the UK capable of processing the fingerprint and photo stored electronically on the card.
An Identity and Passport Service spokesman said in a statement: "Balpa have come to us with their concerns and we have spoken to them a number of times about how we can work with industry to resolve these.
"Identity cards will directly benefit airside workers — not just by improving personnel security but also by speeding up pre-employment checks and increasing the efficiency of pass-issuing arrangements, making it easier for these workers to take up their posts and move from one airside job to another."
"Identity cards will be mandatory for all airside workers, just as other pre-employment checks are today, so that the benefits from the scheme can be realised across the aviation sector."
Talkback
ID cards will not bring benefits to airside workers. It may speed up the vetting process if the applicant has an ID crd before applying, but tht is not what is proposed. All airside workes have already been vetted to far greater a depth than would be done with an ID card, so for current workers there is no benefit. It would not help when moving from one job to another, having been vetted once there is no need to do it again just to take up another job. This is yet another load of bollocks from a Government that considers it quite acceptable to lie through its teeth. Remember The Dodgy Dossier and WMDs. To quote Goebbels, if you want to tell a lie make it a big one, repeat it often and loudly.
Where in the airside workers' contract of employment does it say they need an ID card to do their jobs? I wonder what would happen if they refused to comply with this and got the sack. They would not have breached any of their contract terms. I suspect their employers would be on an extremely sticky wicket with that one.
This is aside from the fact that the replacement of their existing security provisions with this dead end scheme would actually reduce the level of security in our airports, by toning down the vetting requirements for airside workers.
Do the Home Office and IPS not realise that the jig is up? Do they really believe that we take a blind bit of notice of their self serving pronouncements any more.
In a round about way, the rhetoric they keep spewing out about the ID card scheme and other stuff actually in and of itself reduces our level of security for the simple reason that more and more people simply no longer believe a single word they say. If they actually (possibly by accident) made a genuinely truthful announcement that needs to be actioned by the general public for our own good; these days we are simply going to scoff at them and walk away.
"Policy is Truth" only works inside your hallowed halls people, the rest of us know the difference.