Sir, Alice Miles says biometric ID cards could help to prevent terrorism (Comment, “We face a terrible threat — so storing my dull, private details is no big deal,” Nov 8). However, the London School of Economics reports that: “Of the 25 countries that have been most adversely affected by terrorism since 1986, 80 per cent have national identity cards, one third of which incorporate biometrics.” Identity cards clearly do not make countries safe from terrorists.

Ms Miles also says that her “dull private details” aren’t of much interest to anyone else, but they’re of great interest to fraudsters. When a mass of facts about her are accessible via a centralised national identity register, criminals won’t need to rifle her rubbish bin to steal her identity — all the necessary details will be accessible to thousands of civil servants.

Criminals have already infiltrated the Department for Work and Pensions’ existing databases to steal identity information on an “industrial scale”. The national identity register will be a goldmine for them.

ANDREW WATSON
Cambridge

Sir, It is not enough to say that, because one has nothing to hide, one is immune from action from the authorities: anti-terrorist legislation, for instance, was invoked in the case of Walter Wolfgang, who was ejected from a hall for heckling Jack Straw, even though he is a supporter of the Labour Party. And if the information held is incorrect it is notoriously difficult to rectify it (even assuming the error is known to the victim).

Like Alice Miles, I do not ascribe any malice to John Reid or any of his colleagues but, once the intrusive legislation is put in place, it will be impossible to remove and will provide any future, less benign, government with all the mechanisms they require to install a genuinely oppressive regime.

HUGH LIVESEY
Taunton

Sir, There is a big difference between the voluntary, separate documents we all carry, and the state-issued surveillance card, number and centralised dossier we shall all be forced to have with ID cards. The ID scheme will not make things any easier, or entitle us to things we don’t already have, but when the system fails the everyday transactions the cards are supposed to facilitate will simply grind to a halt.

Our passports already comply with US and international requirements. It has taken this Government three years and a 100 per cent increase in the cost of passports to do what the Irish Government did in just seven months and £4 million in total.

Tony Blair continues to claim overwhelming support for ID cards (report, Nov 6) when for almost a year every independent poll has shown that the majority of people think ID cards are a bad idea. Dodgy surveys, like dodgy dossiers, are no justification.

ID cards aren’t modern, nor are biometrics a magic wand. Technologies, and governments, come and go but liberty persists.

PHIL BOOTH
National Co-ordinator, NO2ID
London SE1

Sir, I support the creation of a universal DNA database on the basis that its absence infringes my civil liberties as an innocent member of the population.

At present every time DNA from an unknown individual is found at the scene of a crime, there is no proof that I was not responsible. Every time children are born whose fathers remain unidentified, they become a financial burden on the taxpayer instead of the person responsible (or irresponsible).

A system which clears the innocent, identifies the guilty, and may deter the tempted, is surely to defend the civil rights and liberties of the law-abiding majority.

THE REV GODFREY NICHOLSON
Derby

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