The Times has a great scoop, a leaked document setting out the latest wheeze from the ID card people. All contractors associated with the project will, if the plan goes ahead, be vulnerable to warrantless searches for twenty-five years.Ironically, the Times story demonstrates where the real risk lies, and it's not with some IT consultants, it's right in the Home Office. The closer to the scheme you are, the tougher scrutiny you need to be under, until you get to the Home Secretary herself, the epicentre of this idiocy.
It would be at least consistent for Ministers and former Ministers from the Home Office to be made subject to an even more extreme version of the same rule. After all, as Sir Humphrey once said, "the ship of state is the only ship which leaks from the top".
