'Scanners Live in Vain' - UK National Identity Cards, Yes: Card Readers, No

"UK spends billions on high-tech IDs, forgets to buy card readers"
CrunchGear (February 5, 2009)

"This has to be one of the dumbest things I’ve heard in a long time. The UK has spent £4.4 billion ($6.6bn US) on a controversial high-tech National Identity Card scheme for the whole country. The card, intended to be issued to government workers first and the general population soon after, would include biometric information such as facial scanning data and fingerprints, encoded onto the card. Sounds great if you’re into the whole Big Brother thing — but they forgot one thing. No police or border station, to say nothing of licensing and job centers, has a machine capable of reading the damn things.

"Incredibly, they neglected to include in the budget the absolutely necessary counterpart to the card: the card reader...."

After reading about what Congress has been doing, here in America, It's sort of nice to know that we're not alone.

My take on the "Big Brother thing" is that putting biometric data on a card is about as big a threat to me, as having my photo on a driver's license. But, the Lemming's more laid-back than some 'privacy' advocates.