Home   Campaign Central   ID Card Free Zone   Take Action

    • Tell the Home Secretary      Inform OWOS of your action

    • Title:*  

    • First Name:*  

    • Surname:*  

    • Email address:*  

    • Postcode:*  

    • Telephone no:

    • Mobile no:

    •   Check this box if you would also like to receive snail mail and you will be able to tell us your postal address

    •   * IMPORTANT
               We would like to tell you about campaigns to hold our political leaders and powerful companies to account.
               But we cannot do that without your permission.
               Please uncheck the box if you do NOT wish to receive updates. You can unsubscribe at any time.

    •     

    • Dear Madam/Sir
      I have been led to understand that your company is considering bidding for one of the contracts that have started to be issued by the government in its “National Identity Scheme Procurement Process”.

      If you are considering doing so, I would like to direct you to a few important points regarding the potential hazards in doing so:
      1) The contractual programme Framework Agreement in not an exclusive one, there will have to be increased cost to cover the increased commercial risk.
      2) All other major UK political parties are opposed to the ID card scheme and the Conservative party has explicitly stated that they will break the contracts if successful at the next election.
      3) And most importantly has your business factored the risk of falling foul of Section 29 of the Identity Cards Act 2006 – “Tampering with the Register” ?
      Details of the effects of the measures included in Section 29 are:
        i. Can you guarantee that nothing your company might do in the future will not, be construed as being "reckless as to whether or not", through an overt act or through an omission, anywhere in world, whether they are British citizens or not, take an action "where it makes it more difficult or impossible for such information to be retrieved in a legible form from a computer on which it is stored by the Secretary of State, or contributes to making that more difficult or impossible"?
        ii. This wording precludes the use of encrypted tunnels, wrappers or sessions over which the Home Office has no direct control of the cryptographic keys e.g. Virtual Private Networks, Mobile Phone networks, SSL/TLS secure web pages etc. due to wording like "any" and "more difficult or impossible" and "legible".
        iii. I would draw your attention to the fact that this section imposes a criminal offence, which therefore cannot be excluded in any "small print" terms and conditions of a contract or Framework Agreement with the Identity and Passport Service, who do not have any power to grant immunity from prosecution.
        iv. Under Section 29 there is no "genuine mistake" or "force majeur" defence, neither is there any sanity check, such as a requirement for the consent of the Attorney General or the Director of Public Prosecutions to a prosecution.
        v. Furthermore section 29 also applies to foreign companies and individuals, and since the penalty is up to 10 years in prison and / or an unlimited fine, this puts it into the Serious Crime category, meaning the European Arrest Warrant and the provisions of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 can be invoked to gather evidence or intelligence.
        vi. The wording also applies to any technical or human problems with any third party companies who are trusted partners of the National Identity Scheme, e.g. banks or credit reference checking bureaux, or airlines, car rental companies etc., even if the core Home Office systems are actually working perfectly.

      I am implacably opposed to the imposition of the Identity Cards Act, and I will be ensuring that any companies involved with the implementation of this scheme are widely censured, and held legally accountable for their actions.

      Yours

      <YOUR NAME>

The information collected here will be used for the compilation of accurate statistics regarding the number of people opposing the ID Cards Bill in your constituency. To keep up to date with this campaign and other OWOS campaigns to give people a voice please click above.


 

We hope to regularly update this section, but if you have any suggestions for material not included here, please email us.

Back to Top
Back to Top