A NATIONAL identity card scheme will be a “present” to terrorists, criminal gangs and foreign spies, one of Britain’s most respected former intelligence agents has told ministers.

[…]

Baroness Park, who was made a peer by Margaret Thatcher, passed a withering verdict on the proposed cards, ridiculing ministers’ suggestions that the system will make people safer. In fact, she said, the complete opposite is true.

“The very creation of such an enormous national identity register will be a present to terrorists; it will be a splendid thing for them to disrupt and blow up [!!!-mm],” she said.

“It will also provide valuable information to organised crime and to the intelligence services of unfriendly countries. It will be accessible to all of these,” she said.

[via bribery and database cracking, but of course peoples lives will be disrupted by ‘functionally fit’ false ID without the need for accurate NIR information – because some companies or institutions will accept the cards at face value]

The warning about the risk of foreign spying comes at a time when MI5, the domestic security service, has cut its counter-espionage budget, prompting concerns among MPs who oversee the UK intelligence services.

Baroness Park concluded: “I find it extraordinarily difficult to believe why anyone would voluntarily and enthusiastically come forward and say: ‘Do let me join this dangerous club’.”

Baroness Park is not the first former intelligence officer to question the value of a national ID card. Dame Stella Rimington, the former head of MI5, last year said she did not believe the cards would make Britain any safer from terrorist attack; they would quickly be copied, she said.

Whereas Dame Stella’s background was in combating internal threats, especially the IRA, Baroness Park has extensive experience of foreign intelligence operations.

[…]

From The Scotsman

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In other news another government IT project has failed it – but this time due to ‘user non-compliance’, ;

At the meeting, the head of the watchdog, Sir John Bourn, said his report will say the government project had failed to win the “hearts and minds” of the NHS staff required to use it.
The project’s failure to “take the people in the National Health Service with them” meant it had become a “focus of dissension” amongst GPs and consultants.

And of course I mean;

At the meeting, the head of the watchdog, said her report will say the NIR project had failed to win the “hearts and minds” of the public required to register.
The project’s failure to “take in the people of the country” meant it had become a “focus of dissension” amongst Citizens and Residents.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 21st, 2006 at 3:49 pm and is filed under omw!, Politricks, Someone Clever Said.