ID pledge

As of 11.44am GMT today, 9889 people have signed the NO2ID campaign pledge.

The Home Office now have a promotional video for ID cards. Don't bother downloading it - it's 15Mb for 5 minutes and the producers use a little artistic licence with the issues E.g. at one stage the voiceover says: "The exact process for getting an Identity Card has not yet been defined. Applying will be straightforward, and it is likely that making an application over the Internet would be the simplest method." I laughed at that point wondering how ordinary people were going to supply verifiable fingerprints and iris scans from the comfort of their own homes. Then I realised I had conflated applying and registering and assumed that they would happen at the registration centres. But the application will have to be completed and sent in first before an invitation to attend a registration centre comes.

The video also suggests the scheme will have just 3 components
• Identity Register
• ID cards
• Verification Service

Not exactly - it has to have:
• Decentralised robustly and securely networked identity registration centres, which people will have to physically visit to be registered
• ID cards
• Central database register which stores all the information
• Verification Service
• Millions of networked, handheld robust, secure, verification devices that are available to every police officer, bank clerk, doctors' surgery etc. etc. who needs it to verify people's ID cards as part of their jobs.

As far as ID card videos go I prefer this one. (A mere 2Mb and much more entertaining).