ID spin over passports

Apparently, the Identity and Passport Service has discovered that it issued 10,000 fake passports just as it is preparing to announce intrusive new measures to inconvenience passport applicants (your report, 21 March). How convenient.

The truth is that this is more spin from the Home Office as it desperately attempts to justify its ID scheme. The intrusive interrogations that new passport applicants will have to undergo have nothing to do with preventing false documents being issued. Instead, it is the mechanism by which the government intends to force people on to the National Identity Register.

Compulsory interrogations will allow officials to clear up some of the inconsistencies in their existing databases, so that the computer systems can be combined into a single sinister surveillance system. The interrogations will also afford the authorities the opportunity to perform their data rape, compulsorily taking of fingerprints and iris scans from unwilling individuals.

GERAINT BEVAN

NO2ID Scotland

Grovepark Gardens

Glasgow