Dover ID Interrogation Centre Opens on Monday

How do you fingerprint and number 60 million people? To begin with you need to get them to come to you. The government's solution to that problem is to make people report themselves when they get a passport.

As part of the creeping move to state identity control in Britain, ID interrogation centres are being set up all around the UK. To begin with there will be 69, on top of the existing Passport Offices. A company called Mapeley, which owns the offices of HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), has been given the job of setting them up.

Last week the Dover Mercury & East Kent Mercury reported the new Dover Passport Interview Office, which will cover Dover, Folkestone, Hythe and East Kent, at Maybrook House, Dover, will open for business "next week".

From now on, when people (as young as 16) apply for their first adult passport, they will have to attend their nearest centre. There they will be subject to background checks, questioning to test their story against official records, photographs, and, before long, fingerprinting. Registration on the national ID database(s) - the 'National Identity Register' or NIR - will follow.

Even though the NIR has not been built yet, existing systems will collect and store the information about hundreds of thousands of people for later use. Passports already meet international standards. The only reason to do it is to prepare for the ID scheme.

The Liberal Democrats have warned that the UK is in danger of becoming a "surveillance society ruled by the technology and the politics of fear".

The party's recent annual conference in Brighton voted to repeal the ID Cards Act and for the destruction of DNA samples taken from "innocent" people.