According to Sir John Stevens, London’s police commissioner, Britain must introduce personal identity cards for all citizens if it is to combat the threat of terrorism and organised crime:
We are sure they would have a massively beneficial effect for us in fighting organised crime, human trafficking and terrorism.
He insisted that new biometric technology, which allows personal details such as fingerprint or retina identification to be included, made mandatory ID cards “a must”.
ID cards are an absolute essential part of armoury in the fight against terrorism and further organised crime. The excuse people say is that terrorists and organised criminals get round it. They might do. But in getting round it, it will identify who they are.
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What I am totally against is the business whereby we can trace and follow people who have a normal life. But we do need to have the ability to identify those people who are around doing their business lawfully and those other people who want to create mayhem and effectively destroy our way of life.
And how would Sir John Stevens define a ‘normal life’? Such clarification is important since it is only those people who deserve to be left alone and not have their lives ‘traced and followed”….
It’s the desire of the police commissioner to have the ‘ability to identify those people who are around doing their business lawfully’ that keeps me awake at night. It seems the British police, despite their protests, are indeed in favour of the Big Brother or rather the Panopticon approach to crime where none happens because everyone is watched all the time. How about allowing people to defend themselves and their freedom? But that is inconceivable to the police mind since everyone is guilty of something at some time and you certainly should not be doing anything they don’t know about, just in case.
Just your ID card, ma’am.
Thanks for the heads up on this.
Does anyone have an email address for John Stevens? He needs to realise how many innocent British citizens disagree with him and Big Blunkett.
Sir John Stevens, true product of the political elite. Let his job be exposed to election every few years as it would be in America, I expect that might change his “Animal Farm” approach to the public he should be serving. 3.3 million Americans suffering identity theft and 6.6 million account robbery. An identity card data base must be the holy grail of the criminal. A more democratic approach to terrorism and violent crime might be to give the citizen back the right to carry a gun, since the police clearly cannot cope.