Flimsy ID-card argument

Following the information commissioner's stark warnings that Britain had become a surveillance society, and the release of a study by Privacy International which ranks Britain barely above China, Russia, Singapore and Malaysia for monitoring of the population by the state, the defence of a national ID database by the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, this week was a pitiful plea to "modernity" (your report, 7 November).

However, that argument does not carry much weight with our teenagers, who object to being fingerprinted and iris-scanned like criminals, and having their visits to clinics recorded on a database over which they have no control. Nor does it carry much weight with older people who remember the abolition of wartime ID cards and the sacrifices made by so many of their generation to protect the freedoms Mr Blair is eager to throw away.

GERAINT BEVAN, NO2ID Scotland, Grovepark Gardens, Glasgow

Tony Blair claims that the overwhelming majority of the population are in favour of ID cards. What surveys is he looking at? I hope it is not the 2004 MORI poll, as that is now very old, and was at a time when hardly anyone knew what the scheme would entail.

The country seems to be split over the issue. An ICM poll carried out in July actually claimed that a small majority were against ID cards. Is this yet more spin from the Prime Minister?

RICHARD CLAY, Darnley Gardens, Glasgow