British Telecom wobbles over ID scheme bids The Register
"British Telecom may not bid for ID card contracts because of concern that its involvement would make it seem like a 'Big Brother' company in the eyes of the public. … The area where BT's skills would be likely to be most appropriate would be in providing the infrastructure that would be used in order to link the network of readers with the national identity register, and hence with multiple other government databases, which would put the company squarely at the Big Brother end of the deal. The Government so far has played down the key role that will be performed by what will, in effect, be a national surveillance network and played up the bits of plastic instead. But as the project progresses the purposes of the network will become more obvious to the public, and the Big Brother aspects will move to the foreground."
Read the rest here.