@fencoul I voted "no" because I remember the ghastly mess that was the National Identity Register proposed by the Home Office under Tony Blair (about the ONLY good thing David Cameron did on gaining office was to kill it with fire). And I also remember my father (born in 1924) telling stories of how the wartime mandatory ID card was misused by the police/authorities to harass people, leading to an earlier civil rights campaign (in the 1950s).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NO2ID

@fencoul My opposition is not about whether it can be done securely; it's because you didn't ask whether it can be done *fairly*.

(That is: without it being turned into a tool of oppression. Which is pretty much guaranteed to happen within milliseconds under every Home Secretary we've had since Roy Jenkins …)

@cstross

👆 How come that doesn't happen with #NI & #NHS numbers then?