Regarding the proposed National ID Card proposal by New Labour, first let me thank you for the links, bb. They lead to an informative 3+ non-stop hours of research. (Note: I am a very fast reader.)

It is already plainly evident to me that this is a horrible idea in every sense of the word. It would make much more sense to implement some type of “Phase-In program,” for example: The US has no national scheme but, in practice, driving licenses are used to prove identity and a new bill seeks to add immigration status to the information held by state licensing authorities.

Here are just a few of concerns that caught my attention. (Apologies to the authors of the source articles as this info was originally intended to be a “note pad.”)
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Lord Falconer told the BBC that the only way to get full benefit from the scheme was for people without a passport to carry one. Under current proposed legislation involuntary registration linked to passport renewal in 2008 would end voluntary program.
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Professor Ian Angell, head of The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) Department of Information Systems said: ‘We don't know what to believe any more. Contradictions, guesswork and wishful thinking on the part of the Home Office make a mockery of any pretence that this scheme is based on serious reasoning.’
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First LSE feasibility study (Clarke dubbed "technically incompetent" data) under Mr. Simon Davies suggested ID cards would cost more than £300 per person versus the government's claimed figure of £93.

All the Home Office will say is that its own running costs - excluding capital investment and other departments' expenditure - will run at £584m a year. The London School of Economics calculates the final bill for taxpayers will fall somewhere between £10billion and £19billion.

Anyone who seriously doubts which guesstimate is likely to prove closer to the truth should consider the politicians' track record. For example, the original budget to build the Scottish Parliament was £40 million.

It ended up costing taxpayers - the vast majority of whom are English - a staggering £431 million. Portcullis House, an ugly office block for MPs on the banks of the Thames, was meant to cost £165 million but finally came in at £235 million. I could go on but there is only so much human flesh can bear.
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Brian Gladman, from Worcester, now a security consultant to US government agencies, said Mr Blair and the home secretary had got it wrong when they accused critics of producing "a technically incompetent report" on ID cards. They had accused the report's main author, a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics, Simon Davies, of bias because he is also a director of Privacy International, a human rights group that opposes ID cards.

Now Dr Gladman, who led research into protecting foreign spies from compromising the country's most secure communications system, has written to Mr. Blair saying he was the author of the sections of the report dealing with safety and security. He pointed out that the "technically incompetent" data was subject to review by the LSE before publication by two "independent information security experts, both of whom are internationally recognized for their expertise".

He warns the new database will "create safety and security risks for all those whose details are entered on the system".

In a damning blow to ministers' claims of bias, he tells Mr. Blair "in case you think that I am an opponent of ID cards, I should point out that I support an irrevocably voluntary, self-funded ID card scheme".

He reveals he would rather pay fines than join a compulsory scheme, saying "it is shameful that those who are less well-off will be forced to put themselves at serious risk for a system that serves no purpose that cannot be achieved in other, more effective and less costly ways".
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The former spy chief Stella Rimington criticized government plans to introduce ID cards, saying no one in the intelligence services favored the scheme. Speaking at a meeting of college heads the former director general of MI5 said the cards would not make the country safer and warned that the likelihood of forgery could make them "absolutely useless".
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"The surveillance society has arrived. And the laws in place are not sufficient to protect us against the state and against the private sector, and against all those who will want to use our personal information."
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Corporate Watch, a Quaker-funded research group in Oxford, says that some of the companies now being consulted by the government about possible involvement "have previously overseen disasters in public sector IT work". They included the US giant EDS, BT Global Services and PA Consulting. "While companies involved in these projects must take some of the blame it would be a mistake to ignore the role of poor planning and mismanagement by government departments," the group's report states.

It blames huge, over-complex schemes that fail to deliver promised benefits. Acknowledging months of controversy over the civil liberty and cost implications of the scheme, due to start in 2008, Corporate Watch says "relatively little attention seems to have been paid to the significant practical problems of implementing ID cards and the National Identity Register", which will eventually hold data on all 60 million UK biometric identities.
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The government justifies this massive adventure primarily on the basis that compulsory cards will significantly reduce terrorism, crime, social security fraud and illegal immigration. But its rationale has imploded. On terrorism, Stella Rimington and Lord Carlile have torpedoed government claims. As for crime, particularly identity theft, senior police officers disagree with the government, while industry experts reckon that the scheme will be corruptible internally and externally and provide a field day for booming high-tech fraud. As for immigration, would-be incomers do not have to have identity cards and on social security fraud well over 90 per cent is down to lies about circumstances, not identity.
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Perhaps the Rubicon was crossed after the discovery in 2000 of 50,000 DNA samples wrongly retained. Instead of tightening the regime, the illegality was legitimized and the law changed to allow retention without charge or caution. That experience feeds expectations of creeping extensions of the ID card database, not forgetting that in 1995 Tony Blair was dead against compulsory ID cards. Skepticism is further stoked by government claims that it has a mandate for compulsory cards. Its manifesto, in fact, talked only of 'rolling out [the scheme] initially on a voluntary basis'.
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We are already tracking people by cell phone. All we need is cheap data storage to store when they enter / leave each cell. Right now, we store their location while sending / receiving messages.

But that's not why I don't have a cell phone. I'm just cheap (and not very social).

"Balance and perspective in all things."

N.F.L. Owners Accept Labor Deal
By CLIFTON BROWN
Published: March 9, 2006

GRAPEVINE, Tex., March 8 — N.F.L. owners voted Wednesday night to accept a players union proposal to extend the collective bargaining agreement by six years, ensuring labor peace in the league through the 2011 season. The vote was 30 to 2, with the Cincinnati Bengals and the Buffalo Bills voting against it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/09/sports/foot...5094&partner=homepage

It has been an interesting week on channel 4 news, as they have been in Iran.

News From Iran
http://www.channel4news.typepad.com/news_from_iran/

What they reported is very different from the Iran presented to us particulalry by the US Administration.

It was interesting to note from tonights broadcast that the current US sanctions far from hurting Iran have served it will forcing it to develop its own techical and industrial infrastructure, paving the way for the logical development of its own home grown nuclear power industry.

Well its ping poing back and forth between the two houses on this one caluse and amendment, meantime more people are coming out of the woodwork stating that the government has got if fundementals wrong.

Biometrics too unreliable, says EU data protection head
And watch out for uber-databases too...
http://management.silicon.com/government/0,39024677,39157245,00.htm

What got my goat the other night was Charles Clark the home secretary arguing that the scheme was still voluntary because passports were voluntary. However when pushed he was unable to answer the point on the fact that if you don't want an ID you can't have a passport, thus the government were restricting one's right to travel as there will be no opt out on a passport application.