A good day to bury bad news

The long awaited resignation was enough to shove this story off the front page:

Cost of national ID card soars by £840m in six months (Guardian)
And the bad news? ID cards cost £2bn more (Telegraph)
ID cards to cost more than £5.5bn (Silicon.com)
ID Card trick (Mirror)
Reid accused of burying bad news

Safe in their hands?

A firm of private investigators has been found guilty of selling personal information on 250 customers, obtained illegally from the Department for Work and Pensions.

The firm and its managing director, Nick Munroe, were convicted of 44 counts of unlawfully obtaining and selling personal information at Kingston Magistrates' Court and fined £3,200.

£3,200? For obtaining by deception and selling on the private details of 250 people? This is what your privacy is worth.

If you are a first time passport applicant you will be interviewed, and your data placed on the National Identity Register from May this year. The NIR will be easy pickings for fellows like Nick Munroe. Register now to keep your data (relatively) safe for 10 more years.

Not so cunning plan

I've received information that the interrogation centre here in Aber will be at Northgate House on Northgate Street. The council's [XLS]Planning Application Spreadsheet shows an application (A070273) by Mapeley to affix condensing units to the building.

Mapeley are of course the tax exiles who will be running the infrastructure for the interrogation centres.

Passport offices deal won by Mapeley
The contract to set up a new network of passport offices has been won by Mapeley, the property company that bought the offices of the Inland Revenue in a controversial outsourcing deal five years ago. Mapeley will set up interrogation centres to be used for passport and ID card applications. The government sold Mapeley hundreds of Inland Revenue buildings which they now lease from them and will pay an estimated £2 billion in rent over the next 20 years. As reported extensively in Private Eye, Mapeley maximise their profits by using tax havens, thus depriving the Inland Revenue of yet more money.

Source

If anyone lives near to the proposed centre and feels able to lodge a planning appeal please let us know on aberystwyth@no2id.net.

No2ID ID Day

Send your photo for the big OptOut and get ready to make some waves

Tech Press Roundup

In recent days we've had Blair responding to the petitioners against ID cards via email, and several press statements clarifying the purpose of the National Identity register. Rather than being reassuring, these have caused greater consternation. Rather than being open engagements with a concerned public, these have been excercises in misrepresentation and obfurscation. Rather than being pacified, we at No2ID are more outraged than ever at the erosion of all our civil liberties.

The Register debunks the lie that there are 900,000 unsolved crimes waiting to be solved by the NIR. Public Technology reports that the Lib Dem MP Nick Clegg has tackled the government on why, despite assurances, the police will be able to use the register to "able to go on arbitrary fishing expeditions". He is still waiting for an answer.

Steve Bell Cartoon

The plans for the national ID card - an easy to follow guide:

Couldn't organise a p-iris up in a brewery

Plans for the iris biometric have been shelved. Proof, if proof were needed, that the Government has never had any real ideas about the technical or financial feasibility of its ID card proposals.