> From latest NO2ID newsletter:
"++ IDENTITY CARDS BILL THIRD (LAST IN HOUSE OF COMMONS) READING IMMINENT ++
The Third Reading of the government's ID Card Bill will take place next week,
on Tuesday 18th October. There will be a limited debate and further
opportunity for MPs to vote on the Bill before it goes to the Lords. At the
last vote on the bill (Second Reading), the government won by just 31 votes.
If all the other parties vote as they did last time, we need to convince just
16 Labour MPs to vote against the bill. NO2ID are busy lobbying and sending
briefings to MPs and constituencies but we need your help too."
"++ IDENTITY CARDS BILL THIRD (LAST IN HOUSE OF COMMONS) READING IMMINENT ++
The Third Reading of the government's ID Card Bill will take place next week,
on Tuesday 18th October. There will be a limited debate and further
opportunity for MPs to vote on the Bill before it goes to the Lords. At the
last vote on the bill (Second Reading), the government won by just 31 votes.
If all the other parties vote as they did last time, we need to convince just
16 Labour MPs to vote against the bill. NO2ID are busy lobbying and sending
briefings to MPs and constituencies but we need your help too."
Please write to your MP, even if you have written to them before. The NO2ID guide to lobbying your MP (available at
http://www.no2id.net/downloads/index.php) is worth reading, and is quite short. You can write to MPs at House of Commons, London SW1A 0AA or online at www.writetothem.com As always, a letter you've composed yourself is better than a form letter, but if you are short on time, there are preaddressed postcards that can be picked up from News From Nowhere Bookshop - sign it, write your MPs name on it, stick a stamp on it and post it.
The Bill has hardly been amended, it remains as dangerous a threat to privacy and civil liberties as ever.
Apart from Bob Wareing, all Merseyside Labour MPs (therefore practically all Merseyside MPs) have voted in favour of ID cards - they need to hear that their constituents do not want an intrusive identity database and expensive ID cards.
UK ID registration - the basics:
http://www.no2id.net/IDSchemes/FAQ/index.php Why is the National Identity Register such a bad thing? Read this article, which explains in non-technical terms the can of worms opened up by the legislation - how our information across government and other databases can and will be linked up, and laid wide open for abuse - and they don't need to pass any further legislation to do so! _
http://talkpolitics.users20.donhost.co.uk/index.php?title=where_the_truth_becomes_a_lie&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1 _ The government has already spent £20 million on the identity cards project, a large chunk of which has gone to private sector management consultants.
http://www.silicon.com/research/specialreports/idcards/0,3800010140,39153229,00.htm At the public meeting on ID cards last week in the Dingle, we heard from a representative of the PCS union that many civil service and public sector workers are deeply concerned about the ID proposals - they do not want to have to handle the extensive data that will be available, they can see the potential for low-paid workers to be tempted to access private information for cash. Additionally, they have experienced first-hand the failures of previous government IT projects. It was quoted that the Office of Government & Commerce is currently tracking over 70 failing IT projects!
Nothing to hide, nothing to fear? For a taste of why we need to take every precaution over our private information and not hand it over trustingly to government and to corporations, read about just a handful of cases where hackers, fraudsters and corrupt officials have compromised existing databases:
"Police data sold to newspapers"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1461095,00.html "PC jailed for leaking information "
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3713816.stm "DVLA man helped animal activists "
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/staffordshire/3951945.stm "Hackers steal ID info from Virginia university"
http://news.com.com/Hackers+steal+ID+info+from+Virginia+university/2100-7349_3-5519592.html "40 Million Credit Card Numbers Hacked"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/17/AR2005061701031.html And finally, if you think it far-fetched that our identity data might be sold to the private sector, don't underestimate how hungry those corporations are to mine every scrap of information that might help them sell stuff to you - Tesco not only keeps a database on its Clubcard holders, it is compiling a database that profiles EVERY household in the country (and they are finding ways around the Data Protection Act to do this!)_
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5289550-107982,00.html_ 
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