Privacy & ID Cards

Earlier in the week I went to London to apply for a UK Identity Card. I have wanted one for over a year but it was only at the beginning of the month that they opened them up to the whole population rather than a few test groups.

[caption id="attachment_371" align="alignright" width="171" caption="Home Office - Identity & Passport Service"][/caption]

There is a lot of debate surrounding privacy especially the identity cards, large groups are opposed to the idea of a national database containing contact and biometric details.
I am certainly not one of them, I can't see the problem to a national database and I am amazed there isn't one already, the UK has a lot of lists or databases across various departments each of which contains a selection of the UK population but none of them contain a complete list. The National Identity Register will unfortunately add to this with another database but hopefully if it takes off and the Conservatives don't get into power and scrap it it may eventually replace other databases and provide a single unified database.

If the National Identity Register does go ahead I would like to see some web based management and viewing for users. A lot of the worry is caused by the uncertainty people will have about who is viewing their information, there is an easy way to solve this. Every search or request for information by a government agency or business should be logged, this information should then be available for users to view. If you could log into a secure site and view all the information the government has on you as well as every company that has ever requested your information it would put people at ease.

I should get my card in a few weeks but I seriously doubt any kind of system for seeing what information is held on me is available or will be available for some time.