Over the last few months, I have been carefully following the nature of the spread of information about ID cards. A very clear pattern has emerged, a sample of which can be seen on this thread:

http://www.perspectives.com/forums/view_topic.php?id=95010&forum_id=71

It goes something like this:

• Someone finds an excellent article on UK ID cards, quickly googles to fact check, then freaks out.
• They post an article on a forum.
• One of the first three posts calls bullshit.
• The original poster categorically states that it is not bullshit, and then provides proof.
• Person who calls bullshit admits they were wron, and then laughing nervously, says “wow thats fucked up”, “UK is sick”, “Whats happened to the UK”, “big brother is here” etc.

Some posters do one or more of the following:

1. Pledge to spread the news
2. Pledge not to sign up
3. Pledge to write to their MP
4. Pledge to write to the PM

• Posters ask why people are so sheepish / passive
• Posters become enraged and ask how they are getting away with this (this happens mostly in UK based forums)
• Poster says, “thanks for letting us know about this”
• The thread ends

It is clear that the problem here is the poor spread of information. People simply are not being made aware of what the ID card legislation means, and there are still people out there who have not had the details explained to them correctly.

There is hope however. Whenever people are told the truth about this scheme, they turn against it, and this is even when they robotically repeat the reasons for it that have been spoon fed to them.

It is therefore extremely important that you use your offline network connectivity to spread the message about this, using all the details that you have at your fingertips.

My advice to you is to perform some experiments with some random people, like cab drivers, waitresses, shop people who have an idle moment. You will see for yourself, that if they are ambivalent or for ID cards, you can turn them around in the space of ten minutes if you use the right combination of words.

You will then be able to turn people at will. If you turn 5 people, and make two of them promise to turn five more, there will not be one single adult person in the UK who will not have been properly instructed about ID cards.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 24th, 2006 at 9:06 am and is filed under NIR.