I think that the government doesn't care much about our personal liberties. I think it is the instinct of all those in power to control those of us who are not. The government doesn't really need an excuse to do this, but when one is available, such as the perceived terrorist threat, they seize it for all they are worth.
Thus the ID card scheme was born. It seems to me that this is a classic case of IT mission creep. As a one-time programmer I know in my bones that a lean, spare, flexible system with proper interfaces is much more powerful than one which is cross-braced with a myriad of special bells and whistles added too early in the design cycle. Most government IT systems seem to be of this latter type, particularly the computerisation of the NHS.
David Birch, in the current edition of Prospect Magazine, has proposed a brilliant design sketch (intro here). This provides a means of associating an individual, defined by an appropriate biometric signature, with a number. This is really all that is needed, and addresses all the problems about security and confidentiality at a stroke. The essential idea is that we are simply allocated a unique number (a classic database primary key) by an iris scanning machine. The first time we use this machine we are allocated a new number. The next time we simply get that originally-allocated number back. These machines could be installed widely in public places. The database backing this system would be extremely compact - just the biometric signature and the key.
Other systems which required positive identification could then use this key. Perfect!
