Simple proposition. How on earth can we be comfortable with the government centralising information on all of us in a National Identity Database when it manages to lose the personal and financial details of 25 million people in the post?

Mistakes occur in any institution. Granted. But collating all the information on child benefit recipients onto two CDs, and sending them by second class post, and during a Postal Strike… And, hold on, 25 million people! That’s almost half the population of the country. One Times columnist got it spot on; Idiots. Utter, unbelievable, jaw-dropping, unpardonable idiots.

Opposition to ID cards is often associated with fears of a big brother state and the loss of civil liberties. Rightly so I believe. However what this incident must surely prove is that what’s far more frightening is the potential of simple government incompetence. In an age where such colossal amounts of information can be stored and copied so readily, surely centralising more information about you than ever before onto a single national database is just asking for trouble.

Filed under: civilliberties, edballard, ukpolitics on November 25th, 2007