ID cards...

Civil liberties.

Of course, I could witter on about commodity fetishism and how relations between people become relations between things and how this leads to the necessary reification of identity onto bureucratic apparati - but you've heard all that before, and besides, the wench is dead.

I've been confused by the Identity Card Bill - it's not going to be mandatory to carry it - it won't be madatory to have it (it won't be compulsory, but the secretary of state will have carte blanche, it seems to my reading, to issue regulations making it compulsory - it does have provisions for dealing with people who must compulsorilly have an ID card - vide:

(2) Regulations under this section may not allow or require the imposition of a condition on—

1. the entitlement of an individual to receive a payment under or in accordance with any enactment, or
   
2. the provision of any public service that has to be provided free of charge,
   except in cases where the individual is of a description of individuals who are subject to compulsory registration.

Until then we can get by without. They seem to want to hitch the card onto the passport system - which seems quite odd when you consider that most people would take a apassport as a breed of ID anyway, so why pass a convoluted and unpopular bill.

The secret lies in the database:

In this Act “registrable fact”, in relation to an individual, means—

1. his identity;
   
2. the address of his principal place of residence in the United Kingdom;
   
3. the address of every other place in the United Kingdom or elsewhere where he has a place of residence;
   
4. where in the United Kingdom and elsewhere he has previously been
   resident;
   
5. the times at which he was resident at different places in the United
   Kingdom or elsewhere;
   
6. his current residential status;
   
7. residential statuses previously held by him;
   
8. information about numbers allocated to him for identification purposes
   and about the documents to which they relate;
   
9. information about occasions on which information recorded about him
   in the Register has been provided to any person; and
   
10. information recorded in the Register at his request.

Note the sections I have highlighted - a tracking list of addresses. This is pure control, pure power on the go here. Further, a list of every access will incldue lists by security forces, every police check, every bursh with authority kept on a permenant record along with all your biometrics.

If you're names not down, you're not coming in, it seems. Anyway, V for Vendetta is out this week, if you know what I mean. The graphic novel was set in a fascist britain in 1997...