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Originally Posted by bw41101
For: - reasons:
1) Absolutely nothing to hide - doesn't concern me in the slightest.
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So, if the police were permitted, by law, to cavity search you without any reasonable cause, would you be happy for them to do that because you've nothing to hide? Or, to turn over your house without a warrant, just in case?
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2) Already have something similar for work - am used to carrying same - in fact have already used same as means of identification.
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The scheme being proposed by the Government will not compel people to carry an ID card on their person. And in any case, carrying, or losing, a piece of plastic with at worst your name and an unflattering photo on it hardly compares to the massive breach of personal security that could occur should your national ID card go missing.
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3) If applied as per abroad, no need for a passport within the EEC.
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There's no need for a passport when travelling within the EU as it is - only to enter or leave the Schengen immigration zone from the UK. Currently you either carry a passport, or you carry nothing, depending on where you're travelling from and to. That won't change, except that you might carry an ID card instead of a passport. What's the difference, exactly? A passport's not exactly bulky.
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4) If made properly with (anti forgery) security will make illegal imigration more difficult.
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How, exactly? Illegal immigrants arrive concealed in the backs of 40-tonne HGVs and don't form a queue at passport control.
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5) The best way for the police to identify people in the furtherence of their duties.
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The police, or other Authorities, have been identifying people in this country for centuries. The number of criminal cases where identity is a significant problem in cracking a case and getting a conviction is vanishingly small.
Seeing as you would not have to actually carry the card described in the Government's proposed scheme, it will be of no use whatsoever in stop-and-search incidents.
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Against: Being forced to pay for one of these, when the choice of enforcement is mandated by the government.
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The cost of these things is in effect a massively regressive tax on the poor, who can ill afford it. It's hardly convenient to most of the rest of us as well.
But the cost issue pales into insignificance next to the Government's demonstrable inability to enforce anything that even remotely resembles internal data security.
Don't forget, if you have any children, that your full contact and bank account details are still floating around out there on a CD-ROM containing details of the UK's entire child benefit entitlement.