PRESS RELEASE
Date: 21st November 2008
For Immediate Release

Campaigners from local Defy-ID and NO2ID groups will protest outside the immigration centre on Water Street, Liverpool on Tuesday 25th November, in opposition to the introduction of UK identity cards for foreign nationals. The groups will wear barcode signs around their necks to signify the encroaching of the database state.

People from outside the EAA applying for or renewing visas for study or marriage ("students and spouses") will be required to attend one of the six immigration service centres around the UK, be interrogated, fingerprinted and have their details stored and tracked on a database system which resembles the UK National Identity Register, one of the most intrusive and insecure identity databases in the world.

Northwest NO2ID co-ordinator Dave Page said "The Government is determined that everybody in this country, and UK citizens abroad, should be interrogated, catalogued and fingerprinted on its unpopular, useless control-freak database. First they're targetting a voiceless group with plenty to lose by noncompliance, but we'll all be in the firing line soon."

Liverpool Defy ID spokesperson Richie Krueger added "We strongly oppose the the Government's plan. As history has proven, when governments have tried to impose this type of surveillance upon citizens, they have rolled out similar schemes by going for the most desperate or vulnerable people first. This is the first part of the Government's strategy to register all citizens in this inhumane way. Big Brother is knocking on the door and we owe it to ourselves, our children and our children's children, to send him packing. We strongly urge people to stand alongside the first people to be 'registered' and protest on the 25th November, when the Government attempt to begin implementation."

ENDS

Supporters of the groups will gather from 11am in Exchange Flats, before moving to Water Street between 12pm and 1pm.

For more information or interview, please contact Dave Page on 07982 814 441, or via e-mail at north.west@no2id.net

Liverpool Defy ID is part of a network of people, who are opposed to the Government plans for a national identity card and database scheme. For more details see http://www.liverpool-defy-id.org.uk/

NO2ID is the UK-wide non-partisan campaign against ID cards and the database state. Scroll down http://www.no2id.net for a list of 'database state' initiatives that NO2ID is actively opposing.