Sunday, January 04, 2009
Double whammy
It could happen to anyone of us. We are coming back from shopping, get out of a taxi laden down with bags and lose our wallet.
Culture Secretary, James Purnell was lucky to get everything back including his cash, credit cards and debit cards. He was lucky too that his House of Commons pass was handed into the local police as well. It could well have been used to gain access to sensitive areas of government.
Mr. Purnell was also the Cabinet Minister who misplaced confidential documents relating to a benefit claim when he travelling by rail from Cheshire to London in October. He allegedly broke guidelines by taking documents out of his ministerial red box before wandering along the train carriage chatting on his mobile.
The purpose of this post is not to draw attention to Mr. Purnell's double whammy, though he does appear to be particularly accident-prone, but to show how easy it is for valuable identification papers to be lost, even by Government Ministers.
If we were to be forced to carry ID cards it would be a simple matter for somebody to acquire one, clone it and use it. Where is the security in that? The fact is that an over-reliance on these plastic cards could lead to danger in itself. Not only would they not achieve the purpose they were designed for but ID cards could create new problems.
Culture Secretary, James Purnell was lucky to get everything back including his cash, credit cards and debit cards. He was lucky too that his House of Commons pass was handed into the local police as well. It could well have been used to gain access to sensitive areas of government.
Mr. Purnell was also the Cabinet Minister who misplaced confidential documents relating to a benefit claim when he travelling by rail from Cheshire to London in October. He allegedly broke guidelines by taking documents out of his ministerial red box before wandering along the train carriage chatting on his mobile.
The purpose of this post is not to draw attention to Mr. Purnell's double whammy, though he does appear to be particularly accident-prone, but to show how easy it is for valuable identification papers to be lost, even by Government Ministers.
If we were to be forced to carry ID cards it would be a simple matter for somebody to acquire one, clone it and use it. Where is the security in that? The fact is that an over-reliance on these plastic cards could lead to danger in itself. Not only would they not achieve the purpose they were designed for but ID cards could create new problems.
Labels: ID
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Perhaps the only good thing about the Blair/Brown recession is that the govt really won't be able to affors to force the introduction of id cards through now after all - surely?
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