purplecthulhu

The BBC are now covering the fuss over the UK ID card consultation exercise and the disappearance of the 5000 comments sent via STAND:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2947958.stm

Interesting quotes from the article:

STAND 'received official assurances that the responses it passed on would be treated just like those sent any other way.'

'Privacy International set up phone lines that let people record their views about the ID card proposals. The messages were converted to audio files and relayed to the government.

Again, the majority of responses were critical of government plans. '

(The comments from Privacy International would be in addition to the 5029 sent via STAND.)

' "It's very difficult to work out the relationship between input and output in this process," said Professor Coleman. "I don't think there's any transparency here." '

(Prof. Coleman is Cisco Visiting Professor of E-democracy at the Oxford Internet Institute)

All of this suggests that the government have been caught out by the advent of 'digital deomcracy' in this process, and don't really know what to do. Whether the apparent ignoring of the STAND and other electronically delivered comments is cock-up or conspiracy is unclear. There are due to be questions asked in parliament about this, so maybe we'll hear soon.

I've written to my MP on thsi (as well as to David Blunkett and the responsible minister, Beverly Hughes). Have you?