As I forewarned yesterday, The Office of The Identity Commissioner has presented his First Annual Report to Parliament to very mercifully little fanfare.
The document, which can be viewed on his website, is a mostly unremarkable piece of work with very little insight into the government's plans for the Identity Register.
Despite this, it does reveal that in the past three months around 5,000 people have been issued with identity cards and the Commissioner's office has spent £565,000.
That's over a hundred quid a card. At this rate if the government fulfills its aim of getting the whole population onto the National Identity Register, Britain will go bankrupt before Portsmouth FC.
And that's without mentioning the fact that both the Conservatives and Lib Dems have pledged to scrap the entire project.
In other woeful privacy news, this morning Blackburn Council held a launch event for the roll-out of the ID card scheme in their town; with Councillor Suleman Khonat weakly toeing the party line and being the first in the birthplace of John Morley to sign-up to a lifetime of noxious intrusion.
Money is being frittered away on a scheme that is supposed to be voluntary, yet has more publicity churned out about it than most other government campaigns.
Expensive, intrusive and unnecessary…remind you of anything?
By Dylan Sharpe
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mrmovie