The Government is using passports to coerce you into surrendering control of your identity.

Under the guise of improving passport security, the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) will begin forcing all new applicants to register with the ID cards database from April this year.

This morning, IPS Chief executive James Hall was in full spin mode: “I think people will recognise that its appropriate once in their lifetime to go through a little bit more inconvenience in order that we can ensure the integrity of the passport document.”

I would agree with interviewing applicants if the purpose of this exercise was only to improve passport security, but it isn’t. Once you’ve submitted to the interrogation, and your eligibility for a passport has been established, you will then be forcibly registered on the Government’s ID card database.

There’s no need for this. The only reason passports are being linked to ID cards is to ensure the Government gets that file on your private life it so desperately wants. It won’t improve passport security one iota, and you’ll be exposed to all the risks and disadvantages of having everything about you recorded in a massive online database.

Of course it’s not compulsory to have a passport, so the Government can call ID cards “optional” on a technicality. However there are many whose jobs require foreign travel. How voluntary will registration feel to them? Not to mention anyone who has relatives abroad, or would perhaps like to take a foreign holiday.

If you’re over 16 you can spare yourself the ignominy of an “intrusive interview” (the Government’s words) and keep yourself off the National Identity Register for ten years by renewing your passport now. If you don’t already hold one, you need to do this straight away, as the interrogations will begin for new applicants in April.

More info can be found at Renew For Freedom.

Apply now and tell your friends.