theguardian, working with No2ID, have carried out an excellent investigation into the new “more secure” biometric passports, of which three million are already in circulation. These passports contain information on RFID chips – entirely unnecessary for a valid passport – from which a hacker can extract your biometric information, making it possible to clone the information into a forged passport. So much for security.

Compare the reactions. Nick Clegg:

“Three million people now have passports that expose them to a greater risk of identity fraud than before. We need an urgent redesign of the biometric passport and a recall of all insecure passports once a new protected design is available. In the interim the government should provide commercially available RFID-shields for passports to those with the insecure design.”

The Home Office:

“This doesn’t matter.”

And these people want us to trust them with our biometric data on a giant national database.

While we’re talking about civil liberties, here’s an excellent quote about 90-day internment from today’s Telegraph via Radio 4’s newspaper review:

Habeas corpus is a fundamental part of the British constitution. The liberty of subjects must not be subordinated to the preferences of a prime minister, however trustworthy, or to the convenience of police forces. Mr Blair sometimes acts as if being locked in a cell for 13 weeks was equivalent to waiting for holiday snaps to come back from the developer.

Roll up! Roll up! British identity for sale! Get ‘em while they’re hot!

I am selling/leasing my British identity to the highest bidder. Unfortunately, the buyer will only own it for a limited period of time (probably will expire sometime after 2008) as the UK government will be nationalising it at that point and placing all details of the said identity onto a national database, for which privilege the owner will have to pay an exhorbitant fee.

Half of all proceeds from the sale will go to www.No2ID.net, the remainder will be used to get a new identity

Best before 2008.

(You can use eBay’s “Watch this item” functionality to see how much it goes for.)

An alert to anyone who was planning to attend the Scottish LibDem leadership hustings next Monday: they’re postponed until Sunday 19th. This is because of an ID cards vote in the Commons on Monday and, quite reasonably, the candidates need to be there.

theguardian reports that Passport cost rises by 21% to pay for security checks. Now, if I was very cynical, I’d think the Home Office were going to ramp up the cost of passports each year so that when it finally comes the time officially to include ID cards with them, that final leap in price turns out to be much less than anticipated.

But, as I say, that would be very cynical.

…from Lord Mackenzie, on ID cards:

He told BBC News: “Let’s look at the Soham murders. If Ian Huntley had had an identity card, would he have got the job at Soham school which allowed him to commit the murders? I think not.”

Erm, I think so, your lordship. Huntley didn’t disguise his identity to get the job so where would an ID card confirming that help? (Ignoring the too-often-forgotten fact that he didn’t work at the school attended by his victims.) The problems highlighted by the Bichard Inquiry related failures in the way Humberside and Cambridgeshire police forces recorded intelligence information, and how that weakened criminal records checking, an entirely separate issue from ID cards. A shameful attempt to use an emotive crime to distort a controversial issue.