ID FOI
Posted on Jan 30 2008 | Tagged as: Politics, Work, The Stupid, ID Cards: Still think they're a good idea?
Just before Christmas I asked the Home Office — out of curiosity more than anything else — how many ways there are that they’re aware of in which it is possible to compromise the proposed National Identity Card, as the scheme stands1.
The National Identity and Passport Service replied that they’re not obliged to provide the information as it fails the public interest test, stating:
[I]t is not in the public interest to disclose IPS’s strategies or tactics for dealing with fraud as this information may provide valuable intelligence to the perpretators of crime.
If the Home Office thinks that a simple number consists of “strategies or tactics”, then we’re in more trouble than I thought.
Or, bearing in mind that they took three more than the maximum 20 working days allowed by the Freedom of Information act to tell me that they can’t tell me, could they have refused simply because it’d be embarrasing for them?
_ _ _
1 This supposes that they know how they’re going to implement it, which I’ll admit is a totally unwarranted assumption.
