In March, Sir James Crosby released his report into identity management. The report, commissioned by Gordon Brown, laid down 10 key principles (all of which the National Identity Scheme fails to adhere to) and concluded, essentially, that government should keep out of the entire identity business.

In early May, the Independent Scheme Assurance Panel reported major deficiencies in the ID scheme, which they found to lack a robust and transparent operational data governance regime and clear data architecture.

A few weeks later, the Home Affairs Select Committee published its report, A Surveillance Society?, which called on the government to give an explicit undertaking to adhere to a principle of data minimisation and to resist a tendency to collect more personal information and establish larger databases.

This month, it is the turn of the Biometric Assurance Group, a committee of independent experts led by the government's Chief Scientific Adviser.

The committee's annual report finds that privacy and consent have not been addressed adequately in the Home Office's plan for ID cards.

Four reports in as many months, all highly critical of key aspects of the ID scheme, all echoing criticisms that campaigners, independent security experts and the IT industry have been making since the programme's inception. But unlike previous unsolicited criticisms from industry, academics and concerned citizens, each of these reports has been commissioned by the government and published by panels led by government-appointed chairmen.

We all know that governments have a problem with the concept of consent; that they have trouble with the idea that no means no. But there must come a point when any government realises that no matter how many times it asks the question, the answer will remain the same. The ID scheme is a shambles. It was poorly conceived and serves no useful purpose. While these reports have been published, an "ID roadshow" has been quietly touring the country. Without publicity, the Home Office has invited selected participants to address the question of how the public can be coerced into accepting ID cards. The tour comes to an end in Scotland next Monday. As the roadshow terminates, it would be a fitting time to say goodbye and good riddance to the whole sorry project.

Geraint Bevan, NO2ID Scotland, 3e Grovepark Gardens, Glasgow. The loss of Ambulance Service data has been described as embarrassing. Embarrassing for whom? The data have not been destroyed as a copy remains with the Scottish Ambulance Service; neither are they in the public domain. No damage has been caused.

What has happened is that a courier company has lost (or "misplaced") two discs with data. The correct procedure when sensitive data are removed from a secure environment and passed into an insecure environment is to encrypt the data and password protect them. The data are thus protected against non-arrival and transit copying. Even although these data appear to be at the low end of sensitivity, the data were both encrypted and password protected. Both the Scottish Ambulance Service and the Scottish Government seem to have followed good procedures.

This case is in complete contrast to the nine or so recent serious data protection breaches by the Westminster Government and its agents who passed millions of far more sensitive personal records, including financial details, into an insecure environment protected by neither encryption nor password. In these cases, the data passed into the public domain.

Dr Iain R White, Past Chairman, British Computer Society in Scotland, 8 Upper Glenburn Road, Glasgow.