Civil liberties campaigners have questioned the Home Office's motives behind an "ID card registration" event at Manchester Central Library on Tuesday 5th May. The event has not been publicised on the library's website, in the press or on the council's website, and follows Manchester's appointment as a "beacon area" for the National Identity Scheme.

Manchester is just a few days away from a major Convention on Modern Liberty, and it looks like being a huge success. The Manchester Convention has just announced a series of lightning talks in an attempt to include more people in the debate on matters of civil liberties.

NORTH-WEST NO2ID PRESS RELEASE
Date: 8th February 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Manchester will host a nationwide public on civil liberties at the end of February. The Convention on Modern Liberty in Manchester will be held at Manchester University Students' Union on Saturday 28th February from 9:45. The event is open to the public and free of charge.

It will feature local campaign groups talking about different areas of civil liberties, combined with live video feeds of high-profile speeches and debates from the likes of Shami Chakrabati and David Davis MP.

PRESS RELEASE
Date: 29th January 2009
For Immediate Release

Stalker State Comes To Manchester

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is on a low-key visit to Manchester today to try and flog the discredited ID card scheme to Wythenshawe school children. This is part of the Government's attempts to extend the National Identity Database to 14 year olds [1].

This is a U-turn on assurances given to MPs and the public when the legislation was passed, but there are powers buried in the Identity Cards Act that would allow the Home Secretary to do it by regulation.

PRESS RELEASE
Date: 25th January 2009
For Immediate Release

Local campaign group NO2ID are calling upon Manchester's MPs to oppose radical data sharing powers, to be debated in Parliament on Monday as part of the Coroners and Justice Bill.

These would allow Government ministers to take any private information about Manchester's residents, collected by any organisation for any purpose, and share it with anybody of their choosing, with no debate in Parliament. For example, the Minister for Health could access Tesco's club card database and see who's buying more wine than average.

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.

PRESS RELEASE
Date: 2nd July 2008
For Immediate Release

Privacy campaigners have welcomed airline bosses' strongly-worded letter opposing plans to force airport workers to register for government ID cards from next year.

Ahead of Greater Manchester's local elections on 1st May, local campaign group Manchester NO2ID is polling election candidates to highlight the cost of the National Identity Register at the local level. The published costings for the scheme, estimated at £10-20bn by the London School of Economics, does not include the cost to local authorities of reworking their computer systems to talk to the Government's central ID database, where over 50 categories of information will be stored on every resident along with a life-long audit track.

Preston NO2ID

PRESS RELEASE
Date: 17th March 2008
For Immediate Release

Preston Prepares to Oppose the Database State

Preston locals are planning to kick-start a new local group of the national NO2ID campaign against identity cards and the Database State. A meeting is being held at the Bluebell pub on Church Street at 7:30pm on Thursday 20th March to re-launch the campaign locally.

Manchester campaigners have condemned the Home Secretary's announcement on identity cards as a "meaningless smokescreen", under which the Government will continue their plan to coerce people into state control. Under new proposals, airport workers and non-EU foreign nationals will be forced onto the Government's databases, and biometric passports may replace identity cards as physical ID documents. The NO2ID group said the move would add nothing to security, and would put airport staff and teachers at risk of losing their jobs unless they sign up to the controversial scheme.