To boosters, they promise to ease everything from race relations to opening a bank account. To critics, they are a costly affront to free-born Englishmen, a looming technological disaster and a political millstone-plastic equivalents of the poll tax, which tipped Margaret Thatcher out of power 15 years ago. This week's preliminary vote in the House of Commons on a bill to establish a national identity card means it is only a matter of time before Britons find out who is right. If the government's plans stay on track, Britons will, within three years, begin to re-ceive cards containing personal details, together with a digital photograph, fingerprints and an iris scan. A nation that has not possessed identity cards since 1952 will, in a step, acquire the world's most complex system.
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