Within the next few years, everyone in the UK over the age of 16 will be required by the government to carry proof of their identity, linked to a massive database holding a vast amount of information on the person. Every persons life history will be recorded by the government and this information will be accessible by various people you have never met in the government and civil service.

If everyday you had to prove to a stranger that you were an innocent, good citizen who had not committed an crime, were not planning to commit a terrorist attack and had a right to be in this country you would pretty soon refuse. Well that is exactly what the governments ID card and national database will mean that you have to do. You will be free, no longer because you were born in a free country but because the state have nothing on you to say otherwise.

The government has been cowardly drawn to such extreme measures by a spineless desire to appeal to scaremongers to look tough on crime, immigration and to clean their hands of responsibility of the causes of global terrorism (politicians are generalists, whose job is to stay in government rather than to actually solve social problems) .

The government's plans could be thrown into disarray if large numbers of people like you refuse to accept to carry the cards. So far more than 12,000 people have already joined the No2ID campaign, pledged to refuse to sign up to the ID scheme and donated money towards a legal fund to fight the legislation and protect those the government might prosecute for refusal to comply and some senior Liberal Democrats have said that they are willing to go to jail if necessary, rather than carry a card.

We at Youth Against ID realise that crime is an issue, immigration is poorly managed and terrorism is a reality but believe that all of these are no justification to the draconian measures of a national database of everyone in the country.

How will this affect you
If you are over the age of 16 and under the age of 25 you are quite likely to be one of the age groups affected most by this. Mr Blair has recently been barking populist ideas that lead to our age range being demonised and feared by other members of society; we are all disrespectful, we are all unintelligent yobs, if you are under the age of 25 and wear a hoodie you are likely to be a real nasty little thug. This from the man who championed, and continues to do so, of ASBOs as a solution to disaffected youths and petty vandalism. Teens today grow up in a state of constant surveillance where there is no privacy.

In March 2005, Home Office minister Hazel Blears stated that young Muslims should accept as 'reality' that they would be stopped and searched more often than others. From a scheme to which is alleged to tackle extremism, it is the most obviously thing in the world that this will isolate members of such communities.

Why worry?
"If you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear" is the mantra repeated by Mr Blair and his friends in the government. This completely ignores the question of what we could be hiding, why we are hiding it and who from. Anyone who disagrees with the state may be viewed as suspicious and with the powers that come from the card.

It is clear to any rational person that the ID card and the shadowy database behind it are a bad thing for individuals and yet it was passed as a knee jerk reaction in the wake of the terrorist atrocities in London.

It's not going to misused, the UK government is responsible, stop being paranoid!

Oh really...
Two years ago 11-year-old Isabelle Ellis-Cockcroft was stopped and questioned under section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 when passing an American airbase.

Recent ASBO'S handed out have included a 13 year old boy ordered not to use the word "grass" anywhere in England or Wales and the banning of a 16 year old from wearing a golf glove and from 'congregating in a place of more than three people'. Breach of an ASBO carries a possible custodial penalty of five years.

The police have been found to be institutionally racist. The 1999 Macpherson report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence proved that the Metropolitan Police were blighted by institutional racism. In 2001 Home Office statistics showed that black people were five times more likely to be stopped by police than white people. With ID cards, the racist element of the police will have a new way of persecuting whoever displeases them.

Our belief, based on virtually identical schemes implemented in other countries, is that;

• The card will be used against the individual
• The card will increase the power of authorities over the individual
• You and I will be reduced to numbers
• The government is passing the buck for bad social management to us