Firms to pay for ID Checks

According to IT Week, companies signing up to use the Stasi Database will have to cough up for the privilege. Duh, well, who’da thought it?!

Speaking exclusively to IT Week, [Katherine] Courtney said the exact pricing will depend on the final operating costs, but insisted that the government would not treat it as a money-making opportunity. “Obviously we are a non-profit-making organisation [and] it is in everybody’s best interest that people want to use the system.”

Indubitably… :dry: It will be in our best interests to use the system because the government will make operating outside it damn near impossible.

Courtney also argued that the benefits for firms using the system, such as the ability to secure high-value web transactions, would outweigh any potential costs.

Yeah, right… from the government department that can’t manage its own costs.

How’s this for a radical idea? We all save business heaps of money by not using the scheme in the first place and therefore avoid them wasting all that cash licensing or whatever, that ultimately will be paid by the consumer anyway (us, that is). See, whichever way it pans out we end up footing the bill.

So, let’s save our money by not playing. Sounds reasonable to me. :devil:

[edit] Before anyone is even vaguely tempted to take seriously anything Katherine Courtney says, she was a runner up in the “worst public servant” category in Privacy International’s 2004 Big Brother awards.

Runner-up:. Katherine Courtney, Director, Identity Cards Programme, Home Office, and Stephen Harrison, Head, Identity Card Policy Unit, Home Office

Ms Courtney and Mr Harrison have the honour of being the first-ever joint nomination for a UK award. They are the largely invisible figures behind the National Identity Card scheme and have steered the project since its inception in 2002. They were, of course, just following orders.

This woman represents the very worst of the state; and the state is not your friend.

Now playing: Gustav Holst – Neptune, The Mystic