Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: aldo_14 on April 19, 2006, 07:11:53 am
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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/04/19/no2id_call/
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No2ID is calling for mass passport renewals next month to create a spike in the system that shows the government how unhappy people are with its plans to have everyone clocked in an identity database.
Guy Herbert, general secretary of No2ID, said: "If everyone renews their passport now, that inconveniences their plans to get everyone on the register."
The May renewal date is also good for people who want to delay having the government store their fingerprints, mugshots and eye-scans.
Biometric passports of a sort are being rolled out already in time for an August switch over. From then on all passports issued will include chips that store a scanned photograph of their holder. By October, the US will insist people apply for visas if they want to cross its borders without a photo-chip passport.
By 2009, when the government hopes its identity card system is up and running, and just a year before the compulsory imposition of identity cards on anyone who renews a passport, the EU will require fingerprints on passports as well.
The system set up to record people's biometric details for the new passports, including 69 interview centres across the country later this year, will become the basis of the identity card system.
A Home Office spokesman said there were no plans to use passport information to populate the national identity register (NIR), the database that will be the engine of the ID system. "The NIR will be a clean database," he said.
Yet there is growing concern about a host of government databases that No2ID said in the Scotsman today was creating a system of "cradle-to-grave surveillance".
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Not a bad idea if it weren't for one fact... if I want to go abroad this summer (and I do) then I'll certainly need a passport. If any great number of people follow suit and renew their passports at the same time then there'll almost certainly be a delay in the renewall of passports (IE how long it takes for you to get your new one). If that stretches into the summer it could really upset my travel plans.
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I'm sending off for a replacement passport this week anyway, want to go to Amsterdam later this year and my one ran out in Jacuary :(
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Mine needs renewal next year anyway so I think I'll get it done early too.
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I have dual nationality and Irish people and thus their passports are more warmy recieved than British ones. When I renew my passport in a few weeks it'll be an Irish one.
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Haven't got a passport.
Might need one to go to some Irish Classic Rallies in the summer though