Blair says "no more powers to eavesdrop needed", no decision on ID cards

[Caspar Bowden]

BBC1 "Breakfast with Frost" interview with Tony Blair, TX 30/9/2001
13min 40sec into
http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/cta/progs/frost/blair30sep.ram 
"....
Sir David Frost: Do we need more powers to eavesdrop ?

Tony Blair: I don't think that we need powers to do that [sic], we
[glitch]...the powers we require to take the security and intelligence
measures that we need, but I do think we have to make sure that we can
speed up the court process, because it's that which takes the time at
the moment.

[NB. Since interception warrants are authorised by a Secretary of State
and not by the judiciary, "court process" presumably refers back to
extradition and deportation issues discussed immediately previously]

DF: And what about, the headlines in the paper, it would seem you have
made a decision about compulsory ID cards...Is that right ?

TB: No it's not, we haven't taken a decision on that yet, we're
considering all the various aspects of it, very big step this, got to
get it right, got to make sure that it's effective.

DF: And in fact you're testing the ideas out at the moment, you
absolutely have not reached that decision ?

TB:...not reached a conclusion yet.

DF: One of the things you hear people say a lot is obviously that if
terrorists can fake passports they can fake ID cards, and the only
people with proper ID cards will be the law-abiding citizens of this
country who will have additional hassle ?

TB: Well that's precisely the type of argument we need to take into
account, I mean would ID cards be effective in this way, however they
may be effective in other ways in terms of fraud in terms of social
security benefits and so on.

DF: And I suppose people do put their things down on credit-cards and
that sort of thing.

TB: Yes, I actually think the argument here, I mean there are a lot of
civil liberties arguments raised, but if you think of the amount of
identity we already carry ourselves, then I think those arguments aren't
as strong as arguments to ask, well is it actually going to be
effective, because we don't want to make a move that, on analysis,
doesn't deliver the result we wanted to [sic], so all these questions
which have been gone over you know many times by governments...

DF: ..many governmments...

TB: ..many governments, we have to look at and get right." 

--
Caspar Bowden                           www.fipr.org
Director, Foundation for Information Policy Research
Tel: +44(0)20 7354 2333