I.D. Cards; Should They Be Mandatory?

[Bats]

That's another thing that makes it funny, all the people afraid the government will give itself more powers and take their rights away, but they don't even use the ones they've got properly.

So even if you are someone they'd actually care about, even if they actually do have tabs on you, you'll probably get away with quite a bit because they're so bad at this.

They could have a man tap your phone line and still not get the info, because he'd get bored after a few hours waiting and get distracted by twitter.

Or they could put their report together, stamp in big red letters URGENT, put it on their superior's desk... and a big pile of other ones gets put on top and nobody sees it for a week.

 

[ajm]

My point was that you are indeed open to the idea of carrying around some form of id if requested too. Your only variance seems to be what countries officials are asking you to produce, which explains your ability to over dramatise which leads me onto..

Er - yes, I'm willing to tolerate it for very (vanishingly) brief periods of time which are entirely within my control. I am not willing to tolerate it under normal circumstances. Simple!

Yes, concentration camp was an obvious exaggeration... but I directly equate being forced to carry around "my number" with restriction of liberty because it IS a needless restriction of my liberty with no benefit whatsoever to the rest of society.

As an aside I was amused to see this topic come up in an old "Yes Minister" I watched this evening, some kind of proposed EU wide ID card scheme. The minister was horrified to learn his department was going to be responsible for rolling out such a scheme as it would be political suicide, the British people would be in revolt! (IIRC the comment on the rest of Europe was that the Germans would love it, the French would ignore it, the Spanish and Italians would be too incompetent/disorganised to implement it.) Only TV comedy but a lot of YM feels remarkably relevant today!

 

[highlandsflyer]

Yes Minister should be required viewing on Law courses!

I like what Bulls had to say, it is an interesting topic. I travelled a lot in Eastern Europe back in the day, and they were super obsessive about identification.

Glad to have spent so many years free of that; and while I take all the arguments that we are effectively tracked anyway, it is nice to have options rather than compulsions.

 

[jonnyboy666]

Re:

locking this aswel, smacks of political rubbish based on a few of the replies i read