Privacy campaigners welcome National Identity Fraud Protection Week (Cambridge Liberal Democrats)

Cambridge Liberal Democrats <camlibdems@gmail.com>

Privacy campaigners welcome National Identity Fraud Protection Week

October 15, 2007 10:14 AM

Privacy campaign group Cambridge NO2ID this week welcomed the Home Office's

lightly-publicised National Identity Fraud Protection Week, and called upon the Government to take action to prevent ID fraud by scrapping the expensive pointless National Identity Scheme and instead buying every UK household a cross-cut shredder.

The Government's own figures show that 79% of Britons routinely throw away credit card statements and other information useful to fraudsters. Compulsory ID cards would not protect against this, and fraud experts agree that forcing everyone to put their personal details on a huge central ID database would actually make the problem worse. Buying every household a shredder would be cheaper, simpler, and reduce rather than increase the risk of ID fraud.

Cambridge MP David Howarth said:

"The National Identity Database will make identity fraud catastrophic for the individual involved and a goldmine for criminals. Citizens whose identity had been stolen could find that health services withheld from them and with one central database as the gold

standard of identity, proving that they are victims of identity theft could be near impossible."

Cambridge NO2ID co-ordinator Andrew Watson said

David Howarth with speakers and NO2ID banner

David Howarth speaking against ID cards

"Identity theft causes misery to its victims and has a large impact on the economy, but the Government's ID fraud website strangely fails to mention that compulsory ID cards and the giant database behind them would make ID fraud worse. It's time the Government stopped shamelessly hijacking the issue to waste money on vast bureaucratic database systems and started taking real steps to address the problem."