Joe wrote:

I don't think we can reasonably expect an EU court to disapprove of
compulsory identity cards. Almost certainly, there is an EU dimension to
the government's obsession with them.

Once again: it's not the *card* that's the serious issue. It's the
linked set of state-run databases, to which the majority of civil
servants and privatised agency contractors get access to, with the
detailed trial of all the times and circumstances when the card or
biometrically-identified individual has been Seen, which matters. And
it's that idea which, for example, the Germans recently rejected -
despite having had both ID cards and local registration since at least
the end of WWII.

Me, I don't think the ID-and-movements register proposed in the last
Parliament (and some version of which most likely awaits under an
incoming Labour *or* Tory administration) will pass muster in either
British or European courts as consistent with the Human Rights Act our
sovereign Parliament passed. But what would I know...

Stefek