MARGARET Gilmour’s “nothing to hide, nothing to fear” letter (October 13) regarding compulsory national identity cards requires further comment.

Her rationale that a national identity card would contain only the card holders “essential written and electronic information” is misguided.

The type of identity card and the computerised national identity register that would go with the card, conceived by proponents for the introduction of identity cards, would be nothing like the system she remembers being in force during the Second World War.

The ID cards envisaged would be ‘smart cards’ and would have the potential to store far more information than what Margaret Gilmour outlined in her letter.

Information on the individual could be updated and added to every time the card was in contact with a “terminal” linked to the national ID register, for example, whilst at the polling booth; information such as, race, religion political affiliations, medical records, sexual orientation, finger prints, DNA and so on.

Also the image of the holder on the card would be a digital, biometric scan, not a ‘photograph’ (there is a difference) which is misleading. It is interesting to note that identity cards made “ethnic cleansing” so much easier in former Yugoslavia during the Balkans war.

Governments have an extremely poor record when it comes to implementing and managing IT systems.

Cyber criminals will find the national identity register a gold mine.

For example, someone could hack into the register and uplift Margaret Gilmour’s information and use it for criminal purposes such as, to commit a fraud "in her name".

The onus would then be on Margaret Gilmour to prove that it wasn’t her who perpetrated the crime

A National ID card would be compulsory for everyone and as such it would be a requirement by law for people to carry the card around with them at all times.

A whole new punishment culture industry would spring up over night.

Legions of “jackbooted” enforcement officers, along with an assortment of busybody bureaucrats, jobs-worth’s and other nosey-parker types, as well as the police would be out in force, pouncing on an unsuspecting public trying to catch those unfortunates who have inadvertently ventured from home without their ID card.

Should a malevolent government ever get into power in the UK?

ID cards would be a godsend for them, greatly enhancing their abilities to exercise draconian controls over the population.

Would Margaret Gilmour or anyone else for that matter seriously welcome the likes of a Jeremy Corbyn/John McDonnell dictatorship riding roughshod over them with the godlike powers a National Identity Card and the National Identity Register would give them?

Margaret Gilmour may have nothing to hide, but she should have everything to fear!

Stuart A Chapman

Ireland