I almost missed this in the Christmas build up:

Last week the Scottish Parliament passed motion S3M-1017 which restated the country's opposition to Identity Cards and other Westminster government attacks on civil liberties. The motion as passed reads:

That the Parliament believes that the fundamental liberties enjoyed by generations of our citizens must not be eroded; welcomes the commitment by the previous Scottish Executive that ID cards would not be needed to access devolved services and its proportionate position on DNA retention; is concerned at the threat to civil liberties from the UK Government's expensive and unworkable proposal to introduce compulsory ID cards; believes that the Scottish Government should not put citizens' privacy at risk by allowing the UK ID database to access personal information held by the Scottish Government, local authorities or other devolved public agencies; therefore calls on the Scottish Government to ensure that all data protection procedures comply with the principles of data protection, namely that personal information must be fairly and lawfully processed, processed for limited purposes, adequate, relevant and not excessive, accurate and up to date, not kept for longer than necessary, processed in line with individuals' rights, secure and not transmitted to other countries without adequate protection, and that audit of data under its jurisdiction is independent of government and accountable to the Parliament; further calls on the Scottish Government to review plans for Scottish Citizens Accounts on the basis of these principles, and takes the view that there should be no blanket retention of DNA samples and that the Assistant Information Commissioner for Scotland should have specific powers to carry out spot checks on the compliance by Scottish government agencies and bodies with the Data Protection Act 1998.

You can read the debate here.

The passing of this motion by our democratically elected parliament is very welcome. Unfortunately at the end of the day it's little more than a token thorn in the side of the Westminster government's plans. Even if the Scottish government chooses not to cooperate, we in Scotland will still be numbered, filed and monitored in the same way as the rest of the UK.

You might like to connect with NO2ID Scotland on Myspace.

Labels: civil liberties, ID Cards, Scotland, Scottish government, uk politics