A Westminster government is fashioning the very chains that Marx found everywhere imprisoned working people, and Labour is presenting them with customary spin and arrogance as a favour to "enjoy" - as Jacqui Smith puts it (The Herald, March 7).

Over a century and a half before ID cards were ever thought of, that great definer of what liberty actually means, Henry Thoreau, said: "There will never be a really free and enlightened state, until the state comes to recognise the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats them accordingly."

Individual rights have been expropriated by Labour, and citizens are being stripped of the little power they once had. Since the virtual destruction of the miners' union after the strike in the mid-1980s, this erosion of rights has gathered pace, culminating in the present blitz.

David Spooner, Dunfermline.

The "New Identity Cards" (March 7) are a red herring. Nothing that the cards could "identify" is not already available.

Many people are aware that when they present their passports at airports, a camera takes their photograph and compares it with their passport photograph. The software used in this process is so sophisticated that it can recognise the person as well as a fingerprint. Recently, a Scottish police force started putting cameras on their police officers' uniforms.

The camera uses the same software as in the airport and links in to your passport photograph. One could also be obtained from the camera in your local shop for undercover operations where the suspect has never applied for a passport.

As has been reported in the Herald: "A major new computer system which links all police forces with prison services, social work and the Crown Office has finally gone live after five years of work, costing some 10 times more than the original budget. The Criminal History System (CHS) means officers on patrol will be able to check the identity of suspects by downloading (on to a hand-held terminal) photographs, fingerprints and DNA information, and checking criminal records almost instantaneously."

So, what's all this fuss about ID cards?

Niall Barker, Glasgow.