WRITTEN ON June 14th, 2009 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Foundation of Trust, Identity, We told you so..., What do we want?

Hurrah, and about bloody time.

ALAN JOHNSON, the home secretary, has launched an urgent review of the £6 billion identity card (ID) scheme, paving the way for a possible U-turn on one of Labour’s flagship policies. Johnson, who was promoted in Gordon Brown’s latest cabinet reshuffle, is understood to be “sympathetic” to critics who claim identity cards will undermine civil liberties.

The home secretary told officials that he wanted a “first principles” rethink of the plan, which was launched by Tony Blair following the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and has since been championed by Brown as a way of fighting terrorism.

“Alan is more sympathetic to the civil liberties arguments than previous home secretaries,” said an insider. “He is genuinely open minded. He wants to see all the evidence and then he will make his decision before the end of the summer.”

May we commend to the honourable gentleman and to his officials the excellent LSE Identity Project. The history of our own discussions on the ID initiatve is here. Some of it will make painful reading. This is partly because I got very pissed off in the process and used intemperate language and sarcasm but partly also – to be fair – because it reveals a disrespectful and wasteful pattern of wilful ignorance and groupthink on the part part of IPS and policy-making officials.

I trust the reviewing team is aware of this important development in human history and its implications for contempory identity services, about Kim Cameron’s work, the Information Cards Foundation, and of the likely forthcoming announcement by the Obama administration of details of a unique online identifier for each US citizen.