Resist compulsory registration

I am totally opposed to the Government's wasteful ID card scheme - hence this week will be publicising the national campaign to renew passports now to avoid being forced to register on the national ID scheme database.

The Government scheme for our passports and ID cards will mean lifelong surveillance, billions of pounds wasted and untold bureaucracy. Gordon Brown now plans to include surveillance of everyday life by allowing high-street businesses to share confidential information with police databases - this will be the most complex and intrusive compulsory ID control system in the world. The Government potentially will have a complete record of all our movements, from how much and when you withdraw from your bank account to what medications you are taking, down to the level of what sort of bread you eat.

You can opt out of an ID card if you renew your passport before 1st January 2010. But the card is not the point - even if you chose not to have it, you would still have to pay for it. I renewed my passport three years early as I am appalled by the fact that in future we will have to attend an official interview, producing numerous personal documents to be recorded, and having fingerprints and eye scans taken for the records.

The UK Passport and Identity Service have announced that the price of a basic adult passport will be raised to £66 from 5th October 2006.

Greens have opposed this ID card plan from the start and I helped organise a public meeting last year to discuss the issue - David Drew sadly voted for them, but there is growing widespread opposition - all the other key political parties are now opposed to the project, a former head of MI5 has branded the cards ‘useless’ and even Whitehall officials have expressed grave concerns.

The cards are to be introduced voluntarily from 2008 but, if re-elected, Labour proposes to make them compulsory for everyone over 16. Once you are on the Register you will face penalty charges for not telling the Home Office if you move house or if any other of your registered details change. The government is looking at issuing cut-down 'early variant' ID cards that would 'protect' our identity with nothing more than a four-digit PIN.

This is a gift to fraudsters - and given the Home Offices' atrocious track record, it seems clear that things will go badly wrong.

As Baroness Seccombe put it during and ID card debate in the House of Lords last year: 'How many people know that when their passport runs out they will be summoned to an interrogation centre before being allowed to buy a few cans of beer in Calais?'

See more at: http://www.renewforfreedom.org/