Worrying development if this comes to pass, and who's to say it won't be the consolation prize for Raytheon after the collapse of Blunkett's original dogtag scheme?
One bit of brighter news though, which crept under the radar; New Labour's plans to scrap the existing Common Travel Area throughout the British Isles appear to have been dropped, according to the Isle of Man government.
Foreign nationals already *have* mandatory ID in the UK. It's called a visa or a residence permit, unless one is visiting from the EU, in which case it's a passport.
The UK already collects biometric data from a variety of categories of foreign nationals. All this appears to be is a (long-needed*) attempt to uniformize and enforce it at the border, which is what most countries (I'm specifically thinking of the US although I've heard other places do it too) do. At present, the data is supposed to be collected at an embassy prior to immigration, which leads to confusion all over since embassies are operated by the Foreign Office and not UKBA. So it may turn out to be a good thing for foreign nationals.
* You can argue about whether the collection of biometrics is a good or bad thing all day, the point I'm making is that the UK is really, really disorganized and inconsistent about enforcing their existing policy.
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Worrying development if this comes to pass, and who's to say it won't be the consolation prize for Raytheon after the collapse of Blunkett's original dogtag scheme?
One bit of brighter news though, which crept under the radar; New Labour's plans to scrap the existing Common Travel Area throughout the British Isles appear to have been dropped, according to the Isle of Man government.
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The UK already collects biometric data from a variety of categories of foreign nationals. All this appears to be is a (long-needed*) attempt to uniformize and enforce it at the border, which is what most countries (I'm specifically thinking of the US although I've heard other places do it too) do. At present, the data is supposed to be collected at an embassy prior to immigration, which leads to confusion all over since embassies are operated by the Foreign Office and not UKBA. So it may turn out to be a good thing for foreign nationals.
* You can argue about whether the collection of biometrics is a good or bad thing all day, the point I'm making is that the UK is really, really disorganized and inconsistent about enforcing their existing policy.
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