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.

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.