So, I happen to read chrislightfoot and today's entry links to the NO2ID pledge on his PledgeBank project. I was having the "why ID cards are evil" conversation yesterday and decided to put my money where my mouth is and a) sign the pledge b) join NO2ID.

The pledge reads "I will refuse to register for an ID card and will donate £10 to a legal defence fund but only if 10,000 other people will also make this same pledge."

I felt moved to add my own comment to the (growing) list, describing my own reasons for signing the pledge:


"I spent several years supporting a small university ID card system, which included smartchips. The technology is unstandardised, unreliable and expensive. The justification for the national ID card system keeps changing (terrorism, health tourism, immigration, crime), and none of the reasons are sufficiently convincing given the sums of money involved.

The ID card will be a large, public-sector IT project, with changing goalposts and unstandardised technology - it should be ringing alarm bells in anyone who has ever studied software engineering or worked on IT projects. Such a combination is very unlikely to deliver the required goals, or be on time, or keep within budget. On pragmatic grounds alone, I oppose the government's proposals.

I will not register for an ID card."


I'd also like to mention the LibDem case against ID cards.

There are some other interesting pledges on PledgeBank, which I think I'll look into when I feel less wedding-whelmed.