“Papers please”
192 wordsMany years ago, our family accommodated an African student for a couple of weeks, while he participated in a project on sustainable agriculture. When we took him to the beach, he was most concerned that he would need to take his ‘papers’ with him. This reinforced our prejudices about tinpot authoritarian states in mysterious parts of the world.
So it’s the phrase ‘“Papers please” Britain‘ that jumps out at me in this annotated leaked document about the National ID Card. Yes, the word “various forms of coercion” has alarming connotations, too, but that could just be a bad choice of words. We all know the ID card is meant to be all-but-compulsory (sure, you can opt out as long as you don’t want to travel abroad, or buy glue, or …)
There some background on boingboing (and there are many links to mirrors of the file in the boingboing comments) or find out about No2ID.
Apart from the police, who’ll approve of anything that makes their job easier, I really don’t understand who thinks this is a good idea. Most of the supposed benefits to a law abiding citizen fall apart when you look closer.