As Sir Tim Berners-Lee put it talking to the Guardian: "The amount of control you have over somebody if you can monitor internet activity is amazing. You get to know every detail, you get to know, in a way, more intimate details about their life than any person that they talk to because often people will confide in the internet as they find their way through medical websites … ' http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/17/tim-berners-lee-monitoring-internet

And, because officially it is not message content, then, like the more limited set of information already retained, all such data could be obtained and used without a warrant. There are already over 500,000 data requests a year. All of them are self-authorised by the investigating organisations.

You should have the right to decide who knows what about you. “I know where you live,” is an old threat. The database state means amazingly more oversight over what you are and how you live. With or without ID cards, it means state control of personal identity.

Join NO2ID and take back your life from the stalker state. Personal freedom starts with privacy.

It may turn out that rather than a decisive turning of the tide, this Bill represents a temporary pause in the growth of the Database State. We will want to lobby Parliament on the detail. We will be pressing for greater, clearer changes than are currently on offer. And of course we will not stop our campaign for new law that will create direct rights for you to assert control over who uses personal information about you and how.

Each card is linked to a "Citizens Account" unless card-holders explicitly reject data-sharing on the application form. Citizens Accounts are records of personal information stored on a network of databases operated by Scotland's 32 local authorities.

Even when not linked to a Citizens Account, the cards are privacy deficient. For example, when used as a bus pass, personal information about the card-holder is transmitted to the bus operator and details of the passenger and journey are recorded and logged on central government databases.

We need to keep up the pressure to alter that culture. There will be fewer obvious targets at first -- though there certainly are numerous schemes that deserve exposure. It will be a less obvious (though we hope not less prominent) campaign, focussed on positive change. We will continue to work with others on the massive task of mapping and explaining the database state. But the main task is to expand and clarify, and to recruit public support for, the goals set out in the new NO2ID Petition (http://www.no2id.net/downloads/petition.pdf) -- establishing personal control of personal information that doesn't rely on the goodwill and competence of the authorities:

• Government bodies must cease all unnecessary collecting of personal information about law-abiding residents of the United Kingdom.
• The passing of personal information between government bodies, or using it for new purposes, without the genuine, informed consent of the persons concerned or a specific warrant from a court must stop.

"Reviews" are everywhere on civil liberties matters, action nowhere. The way DNA records are routinely collected and kept by the police, the monitoring of all our movements by numberplate recognition and the e-Borders programmes seem to be continuing largely undisturbed.

Has the new government been seduced from its fine principles by a battalion of Sir Humphreys? They won't be admitting it, but the database state is back.

We believe that both external borders and interior surveillance are following the same principles: Movement of people is supposed to be monitored and channeled to maintain the "status quo", according to economic needs, to keep the idea of a nation state as a cultural and economic community alive. This can only be changed if we challenge both national borders and "internal" surveillance at the same time, and if we accept people's autonomy to live their life how and where they want to.

The Coalition's actions, even at this early stage, are not consistent with its commitments. That ought to be a political liability for the government parties.

No-one wants to promote fraud. But that does not mean anything claimed to be an anti-fraud measure is worth its other consequences. The details of the scheme are very sketchy so far, but NO2ID will be taking a very close interest in the costs to privacy as well as the cost-effectiveness of any mass data-sharing that it involves. Fishing expeditions to turn up suspects are a very different matter from targeted investigations. 'Computer says no,' would be a weird way to run a welfare system.

But the Bill going through Parliament right now to abolish ID cards and the ID database doesn't go far enough to protect your identity and privacy. Nor will it scrap the database state. Instead, the Bill as drafted will:

• introduce broad data-sharing powers around identity documents that would immediately apply to millions of people;
• allow your passport information to be widely shared by civil servants;
• impose sentences of up to 2 years for legitimately, or accidentally through error or misprint, holding identity documents in more than one name;
• do nothing to address the issue of "ID cards for foreign nationals" – actually Biometric Residence Permits, required under EC regulations to be issued in the form of a card.

The "accelerated roll-out" of Summary Care Records is not about patient care, but is rather a blatant attempt by CfH to preserve a heavily-criticised, extremely costly IT programme that - on the evidence of two independent studies - delivers few of the claimed benefits.

What it does deliver is a complete and total invasion of privacy, which is next to impossible to opt-out of.