International Law

Office of the Identity Commissioner - Annual Report 2009

The National Identity Scheme Commissioner is currently the quangocrat Sir Joseph Pilling, with a five or six figure salary, five staff, an office on Millbank, within easy waddling distance of the Home Office and Whitehall and a budget of over half a million pounds a year but with no powers to investigate individual complaints from the public or to punish abuses by bureaucrats or politicians or their sub-contractors

See our previous article: Sir Joseph Pilling appointed as National Identity Scheme Commissioner - how can a former Whitehall "Sir Humphrey" be "independent" of the Home Office ?

and also the NO2ID discussion forum:

http://forum.no2id.net/viewtopic.php?t=31032

See this FOIA request: Recruitment process for Identity Commissioner

The Identity and Passport Service (IPS) spent £42,077.24 on recruitment consultants and £8,826.35 on advertising for this post. The job was publicly advertised in the Sunday Times on 18 January 2009, as well as via the Cabinet Office Public Appointments website and the Odgers Ray and Berndtson website. 20 people applied for the post, and six of them were interviewed - after which Sir Joseph, who had not applied and was not interviewed, was 'phoned up out of the blue, at home, by his former bosses at the Home Office and offered the job.

Sir Joseph Pilling
Office of the Identity Commissioner
1st floor, 30 Millbank
c/o Millbank Tower
21-24 Millbank
London
SW1P 4QP

Email: enquiries@identitycommissioner.gsi.gov.uk

N.B. using a UK Government .gsi.gov.uk email address means that any email correspondence to the Identity Commissioner e.g. a "leak" or a complaint from a Home Office or Identity and Passport Service whistleblower or a complainant, could be tracked and intercepted, without any need for any RIPA authorisations at all.

The Identity Commissioner should publish a PGP Public Encryption Key, to help establish a secure channel for whistleblower leaks and complaints, which the Home Office should not be tempted to try to snoop on. This would also demonstrate to the public that the Identity Commissioner understands some basic data security, privacy and personal anonymity issues, which are relevant to the National Identity Scheme.

Website: http://www.identitycommissioner.org (why is this not a .UK registered domain name ?)

Office of the Identity Commissioner - Annual Report 2009 (PDF - 179Kb)

See the cross party NO2ID Campaign for powerful opposition and analysis of this wretched scheme.

Some highlights from this "Annual" report, which only covers the last 3 months of 2009:

Full post as published by Spy Blog on February 27, 2010 (boomark / email).