The national identity register – the controversial database at the heart of the ID card scheme – is up and running, the BBC reports.
538 people were on the database last week; all except one were UK nationals.
Greater Manchester recently became the first part of the UK where British citizens could apply for ID cards.

Ministers announced that ID cards will be on sale in Manchester in two weeks’ time — as official figures revealed the high cost of their development, The Times reports.
The Home Office have spent nearly £230,000 a day on developing ID cards and biometric passports so far this year, a total of £216million since April 2006.
Registering for an ID card in Manchester today, Phil Woolas, Immigration Minister, said he believed everyone would have one within a …

Almost 10 per cent of Estonian voters cast their votes electronically in this year’s local councils’ elections, which is an absolute record in this tiny Northern European country.
104,415 people gave their votes electronically, using the country’s innovative ID-cards for voting. That is about 9.6% of the total voters in the local councils’ election.
In European Parliament election, in June this year, only 58,669 people gave their votes electronically.
Estonian electronic voting is possible thanks to the ID-cards …

The Union Flag has been banned from Britain’s new identity card in case it offends the nationalist community in Northern Ireland, the Daily Mail reports.
The cards will feature the royal coat of arms, alongside discreet images of a rose, thistle shamrock and daffodil representing the four countries of the UK.
A Government impact assessment states that the ID cards must respect the “identity rights” of Irish nationalists in Ulster, meaning that the designers “sought to avoid …

MPs yesterday approved fines of up to £1,000 for those who fail to tell the passport and identity service of changes in their personal details including address, name, nationality and gender, the Guardian reports.
The fines are part of a package of secondary legislation being pushed through parliament designed to implement the national identity card scheme, and which will allow sensitive personal data on the ID card/passport database to be shared with the police, security services …

British citizens will never be forced to carry ID cards as Home Secretary Alan Johnson said that a trial scheme that was to force some airport staff to carry the controversial cards has been scrapped, the Daily Mail reports.
It means that carrying an ID card will now never be made compulsory for members of the general public.
Insisting that ID cards should be voluntary, Johnson said: “Holding an identity card should be a personal choice for …

EUObserver reports:
An Estonian man has become the first person in EU history to vote online, as internet campaigns make their mark on the 2009 elections. But a throwback in Northern Ireland has seen canvassers threatened with a gun.
Vahur Orrin from Tallinn cast his vote in Brussels one second after the virtual polling station opened at 8.00am local time, with the moment captured on video for the YouTube file-sharing website.
And here’s the video, too:

This is one …

Scottish Parliament rejected Government’s proposed ID cards, deciding that the cards would not deter crime, not add to security and would do very little for civil liberties.
MSP Fergus Ewing told the Parliament that the government could not be trusted to keep the data safe. He also said cards were a colossal waste of money and the £5bn would be better spent elsewhere.

Well, I am sure that there is better use for the five billion, especially …