Richard's Kingdom

The UK National Identity Card can be cloned and altered by IT security experts.
Colour me unsurprised.
The consultants who carried out this work are from the same community of experts who have been warning [pdf] that the cards would be cracked since the Home Office first disclosed the mechanics of the scheme.
The alterations can be detected [...]

Dear Richard Caborn MP,
In recent days the Home Secretary has announced that airside workers at Manchester and City airports will no longer be compelled to enroll with the National Identity Register as a condition of their continued employment. This news has been presented as a pledge that Identity Cards will never be compulsory for UK [...]

To: Alan Powell, Editor, The Star
Dear Sir
James Hall is wrong to claim ID cards will be voluntary (Letters, 10 June).
Sheffield residents won’t be forced onto the National Identity Register directly, unless they’re from outside the European Economic Area, however the Government intends to make it impossible for us to live without an ID card.
Compulsion will [...]

Jacquie Smith is to step down as Secretary of State for the Home Department in the cabinet reshuffle that Gordon Brown is planning to make after the European elections on Thursday.
While the door to the Home Secretary’s office has revolved ever more rapidly since 2001 the authoritarian brief of its occupants has hardly wavered.
Somewhere in [...]

There were a bunch of news stories last week ridiculing the Government’s ID card strategy by revealing that, though 50,000 cards will have been issued by April, no official (or unofficial) organisation is yet capable of reading them. No card readers have been issued and the back-end systems aren’t ready yet either. Ministers say they’ve [...]