(image: “Lord Saatchi” aka Maurice)
M&C Saatchi is taking money to help the UK’s government convince British citizens that ID cards capable of holding “the personal details of 60 million citizens — including fingerprints and iris patterns — on a central database” are a good idea.
Uh, what? The plan, known as the Natinoal Identity Scheme (cuz that’s what it sounds like!), launches in November. Apparently, by 2017, everyone 16 and over will have one of the fancy cards. However, people are worried that somehow criminals and, eh hem, terrorists, could steal people’s info and somehow gain access to it and do bad things.
Find out WTF after the jump.
More: Saatchi’s international work
The Home Office is responsible for hiring Saatchi. An interesting tidbit; Maurice Saatchi, part owner of the shop, is a former member of the Conservative Party, which has “vehemently opposed” the cards since the idea was introduced in 2001.
The things we’ll do for a buck, eh? We think it’s odd that the conservative party would be against such a move, unless like American conservatives the idea is less government = better.
Matthew Sinclair, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: ‘If the Government still can’t convince people that it is a good idea, then they should accept that rather than spending more public money trying to change people’s minds.’
Good point Matt. Now if only we could do the same thing here on the subject of…Fooled you, we won’t go there.