British ID cards get boost in parliament

The daily denounces Tony Blair's plan to introduce national identity cards, after the House of Commons voted to require anyone applying for a new passport to register for the new cards, from 2008. The proposal will now face a further round of debate in the House of Lords. "Ministers have argued, as Gordon Brown [the Chancellor of the Exchequeur] did again yesterday, that ID cards will make it easier to deter identity theft, illegal immigration, unauthorised use of public services, and - of course -terrorism. Their point is that the interests of national security must, on occasion, outweigh the claims of civil liberties. Yet the effectiveness of ID cards is by no means proven ... This misguided Bill thus offers the worst of both worlds: it will curb freedoms we prize without even fulfilling the purpose for which it was supposedly conceived."

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