Oliver Letwin, the UK shadow Home Secretary for the Conservative Party, has said he remained “highly dubious” about any move towards a compulsory ID card.
Come on Oliver, you can do better than this! How about saying something more like the following:
The Home Secretary, David Blunkett, forsooth, can try to force me to carry one of these draconian internal passports, in his attempt to turn this former land of liberty, into a socialist police state. But I will rot to death as a prisoner, in the Lubyanka gaol of his choosing, before I ever carry one of these modern forms of an Auchwitz tattoo. I am not a number. I am a free man.
Obviously, you may wish to be slightly less strong than this, as any professional Westminster politician must, I suppose, agree to be bound by any laws ratified by Parliament (except Dawn Primarolo, of course, the Treasury minister who refused to pay the poll tax).
However, I currently possess a full-length poster of you, which I garland every day with fresh flowers, and I need something a bit stronger than “highly dubious”. A Conservative copper-bottomed promise, from you, to abolish ID cards forthwith, the day after an election victory, would do the trick.
I hate to be shameless about this, but a promise like this would also gain you hatfuls of votes. It’s grubby I know, but unless you want me to replace your poster, with one of the eminent Mr. David Carr, you need to show me what you’ve got; what I’ve seen so far isn’t yet good enough.
Labour could lose the election over this card crap. I predict this issue will put more people on the streets than the hunting ban or the iraq war put together. Just let them try it!
I predict this issue will put more people on the streets than the hunting ban or the iraq war put together.
And just look how effective those protests were.
Pardon me for being jaded, but I’m feeling rather…ummm…jaded about the political climate in the UK right now.
But I will rot to death as a prisoner, in the Lubyanka gaol of his choosing, before I ever carry one of these modern forms of an Auchwitz tattoo.
No offense, sir, but are you prepared to make that pledge?
A rebuttal to the card!
S. Weasel:
On the other hand, look how effective the protests against the poll tax were. And since everybody is going to have to pay big bucks for the ID card, savvy politicians ought to be able to spin it as a poll tax.
Ok Andy… rescue the blutack from the back of that Letwin poster because the Official Samizdata.net David Carr poster(tm) will be mailed to you tomorrow (via UPS of course as we have no truck with the nationalised postal service, hehehehe).
D Anghelone writes:
No offense, sir, but are you prepared to make that pledge?
A fair question, deserving a fair answer.
I will make this pledge, under certain conditions, below, but if I’m being honest, I cannot make it unconditionally.
There is one condition where you will find me in a shuffling queue, at a police station, handing over £40 pounds, having my iris photographed, and then having a barcode tattooed on my forehead, marked “Property of the State”.
That is if the British state directly threatens my family, if I don’t co-operate. For instance, if they withdraw health cover from them, police protection from them, or prevent me from earning a living, to provide for them.
I believe they will do all of these things, to “persuade” recalcitrant British people to get down to the Police station, should they survive the initial onslaught to bring this appalling measure in.
But, as Ayn Rand said, in one of her books, one mustn’t stand in the way of a juggernaut, and die, in order to stop it.
I would, though, like to think that I would definitely honour this pledge, if I was a single man. But my family always comes first, and I feel I would succumb under such pressure, if pushed to the limit.
But a fateful day, I feel, is creeping closer towards me, something I have been trying to avoid for some time. I am gradually, I think, acquiring the total insane stupidity, to become an aspiring politician.
And I believe it is the requirement of those, who wish to lead us, including myself if I should be so stupid, that they be better than us, that they do stand in the way of the juggernaut. It is the price they pay.
This is because although Mr Blunkett would be able to sleep at night, with Mr private citizen Andy Duncan in jail, along with all the BBC licence fee defaulters, the sight of the Opposition shadow Home Secretary in jail, refusing to obey this measure, would instantly bring it down. And further, if Mr Oliver Letwin, were to make this Mandela-esque Oliver Cromwell-esque pledge, I would then be honour-bound, by this initial post, to do the same, and to share his cell in whichever Robben Island Gulag the socialists create for us.
And so, I feel, would millions of others.
It’s a pathetic answer, I am only too well aware. And becoming a UK political prisoner, does have a certain Solzhenytsin-type masochistic appeal about it, but I have to be honest with you.
I will do everything I can to resist this measure, until the bastards threaten my children. At that point, I will have to make a choice, either to take up arms, passively resist, or obey. I do not know which path I will choose. I suspect I will obey, at least to the point which keeps my family temporarily safe.
Though I feel it will not come this far.
The Labour Party seem to have forgotten that one of the reasons they are in power, is partially because of the Poll Tax protests. I fear they haven’t seen anything yet, on the ID card marches which will bring Whitehall to a more complete halt than anything the Poll Tax ever brought about.
And rest assured, if I’m not somewhere in the vanguard of that particular protest, you may take me out and shoot me.
I cannot believe the idiot Blunkett is even talking about police state measures like this. I think it demonstrates the complete remoteness of those figures at the head of the Labour Party, who think, somehow, they are in power forever.
This will only be true if men like Letwin and IDS don’t realise that this is the time to make the stand.
Blunkett is a creature of the socialist workers’ republic of South Yorkshire. It is time he, and his evil ilk, were pushed back into its slag heaps of history.
This famous picture was actually taken on a slag heap near Sheffield. Imagine the monolith is/are Id cards/Blunkett/New Labour/Old Labour.
Aah that’s much better.
We’ll be fighting in the streets
With our children at our feet
And the morals that they worship will be gone
And the men who spurred us on
Sit in judgement of all wrong
They decide and the shotgun sings the song
All these rock-quotes: someone is going to be hit for a whacking bill for A&Q rights…
There are some nice words in this thread, but ultimately if people are told to accept ID cards I’m sure they will.
Many, perhaps most, people will always do what they are told, however outrageous. Some won’t.
Andy and his family could leave the country. That is the final answer, and they won’t be banning flights out, I feel sure.
Of course anyone who does go to prison over this on principle will have their irises scanned and DNA filched on their first day inside, if it comes to that, so we need to think smarter on this one.
Actually a threat by a couple of hundred thousand highly qualified graduates to emigrate might be the most effective counter-threat. Plenty of places worldwide are freer on this issue and love to have British expat workers (we do actual work instead of just stealing from the company, for one thing – you’d be surprised how rare that is).
How much time do we have? I don’t mean the legislative timetable – when is enforcement due if Blunkett gets his way? Then we can plan a little better.
They are saying it will take at least three years to set up. That is, no cards until after the next election. This means that we have to get the Tories to unequivocally promise that they will scrap the card, and then we have to protest in such large numbers that Labour backs down because they think they will lose the next election over this issue. If they don’t, we then have to vote them out. It’s that simple.
Persuasive. I like Michael Jennings’ analysis above. Straightforward and do-able, even if not easy.
So first the Tory Party. We have to get them onside, whatever it takes.
How encouraging to read about ways to stand up for your rights!!
What about printing out leaflets and handing them out in your neighborhood? Get a lot of people behind you and organize to vote against those who will take away your rights.
I think it would be interesting if some ran for office. Most posters here are articulate and concerned about preserving freedom.
As an American who also is adamantly opposed to ID cards, I completely agree with Andy Duncan’s feelings about refusing to carry one. I also made a promise – to myself at any rate- to consider this the line that cannot be crossed.
Unfortunately the qualifications that Andy mentioned above have to be considered. One of the most persuasive points against direct refusal to cooperate is Mark’s point: once you are in prison, you will be forcibly ID’ed anyway.
So resist the establishment of this tyranny with all your might. I pledge to do the same here, where our Republicans – who ought to know better- are pushing them as anti-terrorist panaceas.
But consider further- If they are established anyway, or even if they are not, the threat remains. Earlier this week, in another comments thread on ID cards, I managed to depress myself by suddenly realizing the extent to which we already carry ID cards here in the States. (Apparently you British are considerably more free in this respect than we are. May you so remain.)
Our existing ID system is bearable because it is piecemeal. Much of the current official effort is to combine databases. That is the bigger threat. Once that is done, your face, your fingerprint, your voice or even your odor could be as effective an ID card as any square of electronic plastic.
I get the impression that many of the Samizdatistas are technically proficient. If this matter concerns you and you do not have some knowledge of software, hardware and general digital electronics, may I very strongly and sincerely suggest that you devote a few evenings to some classes at your local technical school and get some education in these areas. Without it you will be a pushover for the government. With it, you will be able to understand and apply -discreetly- the techniques of privacy that will undoubtedly be quietly developed.
I fervently hope that the ID cards will be defeated, over and over if necessary. However as long as the people who see fit to propose them are in any power at all, they will continue to believe they have a right to know everything about us. After all, their real objective isn’t simply to have us carry pieces of plastic. If that were the case, they could just find employment with the credit card companies. If they are frustrated in the ID card route, they will push in another.
In fact they are doing both at the same time. The Defense Department is working on a pilot project for an all encompassing system. Once the bureaucracy is in place, pilot project notwithstanding, it will grow. I can’t forsee how this will be resisted, but I can definitely predict that practical technical knowledge will be necessary to do it.
(It is also cost effective. I have built all my computers out of parts for the last ten years, since I took those night school classes. They are multiproccessor hotrods as powerful as anything you can buy, at 1/3 to 1/2 retail prices. Perhaps even more cost effective has been the ability to fix problems myself, quickly when they occur, instead of being dependent on someone else.)
mark: Plenty of places worldwide are freer on this issue and love to have British expat workers […] But most of them require the assurance that you are going home, all, a passport, and some sort of criminal record report…
Doug’s comment cuts both ways. Maybe you’ll be forcibly ID-ed in prison. But if you’re under constant surveillance anyway, you might as well be in prison. I always thought of Foucault as a charlatan, until the cc-tv cameras were on every building.
The proper free market manner in which to resist ID tags is to employ the services of forgers. These can be contacted via the traditional pub “geezer who knows a bloke who can get it fixed”.
When PC Plod stops you for ID, is he going to be lugging around a half ton of scannage tools? Not on yer nelly. That stuff will be back in the station, maybe not even there in rural areas. So long as you can flash a convincing fraud, he’ll nod and say “be about your business, citizen”.
There is/was a group blog about TIA/Homeland Security called the Watchtower. Maybe it moved after the Jehovah’s Witnesses contacted them or something.
Looking at my “Privacy” category, I see things like “The Pentagon is developing a radar-based device that can identify people by the way they walk” “The problem of identity theft [requiring high-tech passports] was highlighted in February when a British pensioner was detained in South Africa after being mistaken for a big-time fraudster hunted by the FBI.” “We’re fortunate to live in a small, safe town. But in this day and age, you can’t take safety for granted [so we need an iris-scanner to keep strangers out of our school]”, etc. etc.
Expect this to continue to be sold in the U.S. using the same techniques. Burbank’s recent “community block party” (Sponsored by Assemblyman Dario Frommer and the City of Burbank) featured “Free fingerprinting for kids.” Expect John Walsh to do PSAs for it; the phrase “it’s for the kids” will play a central part.
Charlton Heston once famously said that if the government wanted to take away his gun, they would only be able to do so by prising it from his “cold, dead hands.”
Equally, the only way the government will ever force me to carry ID is by placing it in my cold, dead hands.
As for effective resistence, it is essential that you do not willingly line up in a queue and hand over your ID information voluntarily. Refusing to comply then forces the government to send police officers round to your home, find you, arrest you, then charge you and put you in jail. The sight of thousands of normally law-abiding citizens getting dragged kicking and screaming out of their homes and slung in jail next to genuine criminals, will cause a public outcry. Besides, they will quickly run out of cells, officers, and court time, bring the criminal justice system to the point of collapse.
Liberty is not something that was ever won or preserved by writing on the internet or going on a march. Ultimately you must being willing to fight, and possibly get hurt or even die for it. Think back to the US founding fathers, many of whom saw their familes and children killed, or died themselves in the war of independence. How much liberty would exist in the world today if those courageous men and women had instead rolled over like whipped dogs at the first sign of pain and conflict?
When Sam Adams said “Give me liberty or give me death”, it wasn’t some kind of Blairite PR slogan or revolutionary rallying cry – he genuinely meant that he would rather be dead than unfree. Do today’s libertarians have that same depth of feeling and strength of conviction about their ideals?
Andy Duncan writes: “There is one condition where you will find me in a shuffling queue, at a police station, handing over £40 pounds, having my iris photographed, and then having a barcode tattooed on my forehead, marked “Property of the State”.
That is if the British state directly threatens my family, if I don’t co-operate. For instance, if they withdraw health cover from them, police protection from them, or prevent me from earning a living, to provide for them.”
You may be worried about the immediate consequences for your family if you resist. But what about the permanent consequences for them if you don’t? How many German parents in the 1930s thought the same as you? Do you really want your children to grow up in a country where they get compulsorily genetically tested, and then implanted with a subcutaneous GPS-tracked ID chip that tracks their every movement?
Luckily we are not in a brutal dictatorship so the government would never act directly against your family. The worst case is being jailed for a while and earning no income. Therefore, if you care about your liberty, you should save as much money as you can, take out mortgage protection insurance etc, so you and your family are protected against a period in jail.
Let’s not kid ourselves here – if Blunkett is determined enough, it may take mass direct resistance to stop the introduction of compulsory ID cards. It would be wise to prepare for it, the sooner the better. If anyone is interested in discussing it further, feel free to email me at cobdenbright@yahoo.co.uk