Hopefully I’ll get this printed off and posted away tomorrow:
Dear MP,
In the light of the recent breach of security at HM Revenue and Customs, there is now a massive and serious piece of concrete evidence that the government cannot be trusted to keep the sensitive data belonging to individual citizens secure.
I have contacted you on a couple of occasions before now, expressing my concerns about the proposed ID card scheme and the associated national database. On these occasions I pointed out that the scheme as a whole represents a huge intrusion by the state into the lives of the citizens of this country, and I also mentioned the serious practical concerns about potential breakdowns and possible abuses of the system.
Clearly, although it seems that the argument from civil liberties continues to fall on deaf ears, it appears that the government has now demonstrated by its observable actions that the practical concerns may even be more serious than could have been feared. I would like to ask you therefore whether you believe that the government’s position in regard to the desirability of large centralised databases containing all manner of sensitive personal data pertaining to individual people is still tenable.
In view of the fact that the proposed national identity register scheme is intended to store many more categories of personal information about many more individuals than the 25 million who are directly affected by the current security breach, I would also like to ask you what level of confidence you realistically think that I or anyone else should have in the ability of the government to keep my details or my family members’ personal details secure and private under the current identity register proposals.
Yours sincerely
etc
You can also read a hard-hitting press release from No2ID here: “. . . it’s bad enough that HMRC can’t be trusted with basic financial details. But within five years the Home Office could be leaking or losing people’s complete identity records . . .” (emphasis added).
ninetysix and ten 
Nice one! I hope you get some kind of decent reply. I’m tempted to write a letter myself now…
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I’ve been so slack about letter writing recently, it’s about time i got back into the way of it. But my MP is actually Alastair Darling, so progress i shall expect none. Still, this is a good time to hammer home the ID cards/database issue :)
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Column by Alice Miles in the Times here.
Excerpt:
“All those lectures from government and authorities about keeping our personal data safe; every statement ever made about the security of the proposed NHS database of everybody’s personal medical records; each claim that the Children’s Database containing all their personal details will somehow make our kids safer; and of course each and every promise about the safety of the national identity register — exposed as quite, quite worthless. Because as soon as you put it on a computer, a bloke in an office can download it and stick it in an envelope and send your most personal details and mine and our children’s across the country with a dodgy courier.”
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