In message , Steve Walker
writes
Al Reynolds wrote:

Read the proposed legislation. It gives the government and other
authorities rights to access to every instance of the ID being
checked (it isn't just a visual check). As more and more
transactions will require your ID to be checked, they will
eventually know where you are most of the time, and what you do
with your time . As a rule I don't have any truck with civil liberties
nonsense, but this is a privacy issue more than a liberty issue. This
scheme goes *way* beyond a simple ID card (which is what
most people think it is).

Damned right. Within a few years you'll be swiping your ID to visit a
library, to draw money at the bank, to get on a bus. Private companies will
widely require them as part of a transaction, and link their data into the
statre systems.

The govt supercomputers will be able to map your movements, your friends and
your hobbies. Any govt agency, any social worker or tax inspector, any
friendly foreign govt or multi-national corporation, will be able to browse
your life like an episode of Big Brother, whether they're trying to catch
you or sell you soap powder.

This isn't crime prevention, the real crims & illegals will continue to
trade in cash or use false papers. It's the introduction of a subservient,
surveilled population of work-units, instead of a nation of free & sovereign
citizens.

I take it you're signing up then

--
geoff