So Dave has finally done it, he is actually lifted a government policy from the first episode of the Thick of It with the creation of the Snooper Force, or is that Sponge Avengers? However noble the pursuit of hunting scroungers, the end does not justify the means. The government trawling any private data should immediately start to ring alarm bells.

Just months ago Dave and Nick were singing from a very different hymn sheet at their infamous Rose Garden press conference. What did they offer?

“…a full programme of measures to reverse the substantial erosion of civil liberties under the Labour government and roll back state intrusion.”

It seems like only an election ago that Clegg and Cameron were promising to end ID cards and the enchroachments of the database state. Where does snooping on innocent people’s credit card transactions fit into that?

In a gaffe worthy of Nicola Murray and the DoSaC team from the The Thick of It, the stasi-esque titled Identity Minister, Meg Hillier, turned up to an ID card unveiling in Liverpool without her ID card.  As the Liverpool Post reports:

The former journalist and mother patted herself down and checked her handbag for the missing card before putting the slip-up down to the demands of looking after her baby. She then posed in front of the city’s landmark Liver Buildings alongside the vast River Mersey without her card.

What a fantastic advertisement for those simple and effective cards that make life and travel so much easier. Hillier was there to encourage residents of the North West to take up the scheme but in one cock-up has summed up just how pointless it is.  This non-entity Minister should lose her job as well as her identity card.

Jacqui Smith gave a speech today at midday on ID cards to an audience invited by the Social Market Foundation, at the end of the event the glass she was drinking from during the Q & A was whisked away* by a NO2ID sympathiser. This picture was taken this lunchtime – the glass is now undergoing a technical process at an undisclosed location. This will not only identify Big Jacqui’s fingerprints, it will allow them to create a plastic foil stamp that will enable anyone to leave her fingerprints behind. Last March German hackers cloned the German Interior Minister’s fingerprints.

The picture above shows the glass sitting on top of the speech she has just delivered assuring us that biometric data will be secure. See also here and here for more details on the hunt for Jacqui’s fingerprints…

*On legal advice the NO2ID campaign plans to return the glass tomorrow to the speech venue.

…more to follow.