Biometric Passports

This is from the "coalition agreement" indicating the schemes that the ConDems will abolish:

The scrapping of the ID card scheme, the national identity register, the next generation of biometric passports and the Contact Point database;

Fine, I disliked all of those but look at the weasel words. Not "scrap biometric passports", but "next-gen biometric passports". So no change there then.

Why do we have to have bio-metric passports? Well, have a look on the US Embassy website:


If the passport was issued, renewed/extended between October 26, 2005 and October 25, 2006 it must contain a digital photograph. If the passport was issued, renewed/extended on or after October 26, 2006, it must be electronic. Electronic passports include an integrated circuit chip capable of storing the biographic information from the data page, a digitized photograph and other biometric information. 

The fact is that to travel to the US you have to have a biometric passport, so the pledge to scrap the "next-gen" passports is a hollow promise. You will still have biometric data taken from you, and it will still be stored on a computer.