GETTING INTO PRINT


* This joint letter was published in the Fulham Chronicle and Kensington & Chelsea News of 23 July 2009


In your entertaining report on the 'Magicians against ID Cards" show planned for 30th July (News, 16th July), you state that the government has "decided not to make the controversial cards compulsory".

Its plan has long been to create dependence on ID cards, for instance, effectively to deny us the use of banking services without producing an ID card. Officially, it may not be 'compulsory' to have a bank account, but try living a normal life without one!

The government is also stealthily trying to reduce our ability to get the public services we've paid for using other forms of identification.

The use of ID cards will be tracked on a controversial database, the National Identity Register, that will build up a detailed profile of our everyday lives.

Security experts have predicted that this will be a gift to identity fraudsters. Yet the government, with its disastrous record of losing our personal data, pushes on. With public spending coming under pressure in the economic downturn, the expensive and unwanted ID Cards project must be scrapped.


Jill Manasseh, NO2ID (Kensington & Chelsea)
Brian Mooney, NO2ID (Hammersmith & Fulham)