The Scottish Government must be heartily commended for its decision to resist the imposition of compulsory national ID cards on Scottish airport workers and students. In doing so, it serves well the clearly and repeatedly expressed will of the Scottish Parliament. Compulsory ID cards and the associated database are not welcome here.

The Home Secretary's announcement on Thursday was important not because she announced a further two-year delay to the troubled ID scheme, nor because this was the first time the Home Office has admitted publicly its intention (leaked by NO2ID in January) to threaten the livelihoods of targeted groups of workers. Jacqui Smith's announcement was intended to pre-empt and partly bury the Crosby Report.

Sir James Crosby is a former chairman of HBOS and deputy chairman of the Financial Services Authority. In 2006, he was commissioned by the then Chancellor, Gordon Brown, to undertake an independent review of identity management. The report was due to be published early last year, but has remained hidden until now. It could not be more scathing of the Home Office scheme.

Having consulted a wide range of organisations from across the public and private sectors, including government departments, the police, banks and security experts, Sir James sets out 10 principles to which he believes any successful ID scheme must adhere. Among them are the maxims that any scheme must be independent of government, and that it must minimise the amount of personal data held. The report also highlights the inherent conflict between the needs of government and the needs of citizens or consumers.

There is no way of reconciling the Crosby Report with the government's current ID proposals. The Prime Minister must make a decision. Will he trust the panel of independent experts that he appointed, or the incompetent and duplicitous Home Office that still seeks to impose its unpopular and intrusive registration scheme on an unwilling public?

Geraint Bevan, NO2ID Scotland, 3e Grovepark Gardens, Glasgow.

Excellent news about the Scottish Government's intention to thwart any introduction of identification cards to Scotland. I suspect that many people underestimate just what can be done when physical and biometric details are digitised.

The life, livelihood and even biology of every one of us is reduced to a series of numbers. Those numbers are then converted into strings of ones and zeroes to be stored on computers for ever. The only trouble is that the present government doesn't have a good track record of computer-data security. Even if it had, such data files can be altered by computer-literate malcontents employed by the state or outside of it.

Courts unhesitatingly accept DNA records as evidence in criminal cases. A central file would have a "code number" for every DNA profile and, if needs be, an innocent person could be "placed" at the scene of a crime. Facial photographs could be digitised and swapped around or "morphed" to suit the needs of a criminal and/or unscrupulous mind, and so the unsuspecting victim could be "photographed" (possibly by CCTV?) I realise this all sounds like a ridiculous conspiracy theory, but the technology is with us today.

We have been unwary for too long. The cry of "if you've done nothing wrong, there's nothing to worry about" is beginning to sound quite pathetic.

Barry Lees, 12 Denholm Street, Greenock.