ID cards will not protect us from terrorists
A top security adviser has admitted that ID cards won't protect us from terrorists. According to reports, Harvey Mattinson, a consultant at the information technology arm of GCHQ, said that the only real value of identity cards would be to help state bodies share information about people.
So there you have it. ID cards are about helping the state quangos administer us. "Tackling terrorism" is just the excuse.
If the British state was serious about tackling terrorism, its officials would act today.
1. First, they'd secure our porous borders.
2. Second, they'd stop handing out British passports and visas overseas the way that they do. (Soon after entering Parliament, I discovered, for example, that the Foreign Office has given away so many British passports in Pakistan that no one even really knows how many people living in Pakistan now have UK citizenship.)
3. Thirdly, they'd scrap the Human Rights rules that prevent us from throwing out serious trouble-makers.
They've done none of those things.
Instead, they pretend that making you and me carry an electronic dog-tag, containing our every detail, to be inspected at the whim of every official, is somehow going to make us safer.
Posted on 30 October 2008 by Douglas Carswell