Need a passport? Apply now

The new Identity Cards Act 2006 became law at the end of March last year, giving the Government the power to introduce the National Identity Register and ID cards in stages.

This means a voluntary ID card scheme will be introduced in 2008, and while people applying for a new passport can opt out of having an ID card, they cannot opt out of having their details recorded onto the new database. From 2010 it will be compulsory for people applying for a poassport to be issued with an ID card.

The new passports will use a small microchip that’ll record the person’s biometric data including their fingerprints and a scan of their iris. Also included, will be the person’s name, address, sex and date of birth.

The new identity database will contain details of addresses where that person has lived in the past. It will also record other details such as National insurance and NHS numbers.

Applying for a new passport will mean having to attend an interview at the Passport Office.

The cost of the new passports is expected to be £93 (the official government estimate) although the real cost is unpredictable.

The Home Office estimates that the scheme will cost £5.8bn to set up and run over the next 10 years. Findings for the London School of Economics dispute the figure, and put the total cost of the scheme nearer to £19bn. Regardless of what the figure will be in the end, it is the taxpayer who will fund the scheme.

The National Identity Register is expected to hold the details of everyone currently living in the UK as well as foreign residents.

However, many large IT projects undertaken in the past have been marred by problems. The Tax Credit System, malfunctioned when some people were given the wrong amount of benefit, resulting in some unfortunate families having to repay the money at a later date.

Another example is the Department of Work and Pensions, whose employees’ payroll details were stolen in order for the thieves to claim tax credits in those employees’ names.

When the UK passports system was introduced in 1999, poor planning led to a backlog of half a million passport applications. Queues at passport offices appeared, as holidaymakers waited to get their passports.

You can visit www.renewforfreedom.org for more information. The site explains that after the end of April this year, the ‘interview’ process of the application procedure works like so:

“When you apply for a passport you will be asked to give lots of information about yourself: official numbers, addresses for the last few years, your educational institutions, that sort of thing. And you’ll sign to declare that it’s the truth.

That information will be used to look up everything that can be found out about you on all the government and private sector databases they can lay their hands on: school records, social services, police, credit checking, perhaps family details… to build a single dossier on you containing personal information. “Data-rape”, some people call it.

First a few people, then every new applicant, will be called in to their nearest interrogation centre. There you will be fingerprinted and photographed (once they have installed the equipment), and put through an “intrusive interview” - the government’s own words - to check that you can give answers about private details of your life that agree with the official ones. If you can, you’ll get your passport. If not… it is not clear, but trying to get a passport under ‘false pretenses’ - if the computer says “no” - could be quite serious. If nothing else, it will mean delay and more intrusion.

In fact, the government has already estimated that 1 in 4 people who apply under this new procedure will have to cancel their trip because they don’t get their passport in time.

The government’s plan is that all passports will be issued like this eventually. But you can take simple action now to keep off the database for ten years. And ALL opposition parties have now promised to abolish the ID scheme - so if you escape for 10 years, you may escape for ever.

If you haven’t got one already, get yourself a full ten-year passport now. As long as you apply before many interrogation centres are open, and the system is fully operational, your chances of avoiding data-rape are good. And by doing so you help to stop the same thing happening to everyone else by telling Tony Blair and his bullying government to “Take a hike”.

For more information on the progress of passport procedures, check out www.renewforfreedom.org - the Identity and Passport Service website currently tells you very little.

Get a passport NOW. And tell your friends, if you think their private lives should be their own.”