Making a mockery of military security
March 12th, 2008 by Nick Harvey MP — Press Coverage, Articles
Commenting on the news that more than 11,000 military ID cards have been lost or stolen in the last two years, Liberal Democrat Shadow Defence Secretary, Nick Harvey MP said:
“These figures are just extraordinary and make a mockery of the security throughout our military facilities.
“Who knows where these cards have got to or what use they might be put to?
“This shows the inherent frailty of ID card schemes with cards and data getting lost on this scale and is yet another proof that schemes, such as the ID card database, simply won’t improve our security against terrorism.”
3 comments ↓
Gentlemen, I do understand your concerns but please understand that the purpose of ID cards is not to be blamed for. LibDems are doing a mistake by opposing ID card scheme but after recent scandals with loss of datas, it is more than understandable. We as LibDems should not get straight into criticizing ID cards as a whole but rather we should discuss points about what should and should not be on them.
In this case gentlemen, it is about absolutely irresponsible behaviour of military personnel and such situations should be delt with accordingly. We cannot simply argue that someones irresponsibilty shows how “dangerous” use of ID cards is. The philosophy behind ID cards is understandable and widely accepted throughout EU.
regards, Milan Lorinc
Vice-chair of LibDems for Lewisham/North Beckenham
former consultant for security&defence in Slovak liberal party
I don’t see this as a serrious issue. As the armed forces shrinks, we will shortly be in a postion to withdraw ID cards for military personell because they should all know each other.
I support the LibDems policy against introducing ID cards. It is an expensive and pointless scheme to keep IT geeks in work. All the large database schemes have been hugely expensive due to creeping briefs (where committees add more requirements in as the work proceeds). Many have fallen over and had to be written off. If we cannot keep drugs out of prisons, or illegal weapons out of the country, what difference would ID cards make. ID cards are just a red herring. Criminals and terrorists carry forged ID, and constantly catch up with the latest technological developments. The only person inconvenienced is the ordinary law abiding citizen. Similarly stupid are some of the money laundering rules. I am inconvenienced if someone write a cheque for fifteen pounds and misses the e off the end of my name, but do the rules stop gun runners and drug barons moving their money around- I doubt it. Finally, when our government is taken over or manipulated behind the scenes by fanatics, as could happen one day, the democratic citizen with is ID on line would then have nowhere to hide. The recent drama series on the BBC - ‘The Last Enemy’ illustrated this very well. ID cards are expensive, ineffective against baddies, but all too effective against the law abiding, and wrong.
Leave a Comment