We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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White Rose bleeding Today’s news about the Home Secretary inexorably steamrolling his Big Blunkett ID card scheme fills me with gloom. It is the same sentiment that gripped me in April this year when the news of the revived ID card plans reached the headlines and made me set up White Rose, a protest blog collective.
The blog has been up and running with the help of some notable bloggers who find the issues of civil liberty a hot topic in the Western world. However, a blog alone may not be enough. Civil disobedience may be the only way to oppose the damage being done. Such actions start from individuals. And we are all individuals here, right?
For now, we have only the shining example of Mr Willcock. Let’s see what we can come up with…
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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This might be an opportunity to start a whole new industry of hackers and ID-card forgers, biometric data and smart chip included. Some hackers will be delighted to plant “corrected” info erasing our criminal records from Big Brother’s computer. The possibilities are infinite, cheer up.
What I mean is that contrary to “1984” – high-tech is individualism-friendly – it empowers the individual, and makes central control more difficult.
Oh, there are lots of things you can do.
* There can be a UK 21st century version of 1960’s American draft card burnings.
* If they have on board electronics, a few seconds in a microwave oven will set them right.
* If they have a mag strip, a really good strong magnet will sort them out.
* A lot of people could mail the card to Herr Blunkett suggesting he insert it sideways.
Dale, from you I expected some ideas more – how shal we say ? more 21st century, not a repetition of time tested traditional methods.
Now all we need to do is find some of those dammed newfangled weaving machines to smash and we can have a real party!
Seriously, you can not stop technology. Figure out what it is you actually object to, and then come up with a cogent platform that uses the technology in a way that overcomes your objections. Hell, if you can do that, then sell it to a VC.
No-one is suggesting that technology can be stopped. But the arrival of compulsory identity cards is not akin to the arrival of the new technology that decides what form those cards take – this is a logical error, an invalid inference.
Technology cannot be stopped. Compulsory identity cards can be stopped and will be stopped. The two are not the same.
Phil,
Mark is correct. The technology cannot and should not be stopped. The debate is about power and whose hands that power is in.
David, I agree with you, although probably for different reasons. I don’t like compulsory, government run anything.
I consider myself both a civil libertarian and an environmentalist, but will have nothing to do with organized groups in either sphere, because I consider (most of) them hopelessly compromised by agenda driven anti-capitalist, anti-modernist, socialists and utopians of other stripes (and I consider utopians extremely dangerous people).
I am sure that those behind White Rose do not fall into this category, but thats hard to tell from your message which looks like all the rest.
So what is you object to? Is it strong identity, government run, compulsory, universality, the card part, having to show the card, the efficacy of an identity system, the cost, the charge (a quasi-poll tax), absence of a quantifiable justification, or is it just loss of a British tradition.
I happen to know something about identity systems, and the modern world could not function without them (and arguably no society could function without them).
A campaign for a voluntary, privately run, and market driven system would certainly get my support.
Phil,
I object on all those grounds. (Though poll-taxes have their place, perhaps, this isn’t a poll tax.) And more, perhaps comprised in “strong identity” perhaps not: the card will be used as a single reference for all government held information; it will extend beyond the governmental sphere and become compulsory in everyday transactions; it will aid identity theft and criminality; it will add to the informal powers of officials both government and corporate.
Do we not already have lots of “voluntary, privately run, and market driven” systems. One provides the level of identification that is necessary for the activity one is undertaking and that’s separately negotiated. It is only when officials get involved that arbitrary requirements dominate over the nature of the transaction and the convenience of the parties. (Example: the Know Your Customer requirements of the FSA. My face can be on TV every day, but a bank still has to require me to produce 2 utility bills in my own name and a passport or driving license–ID card in due course, of course–before opening an account for me.)
Phil,
I agree with Guy Herbert. I am often required to prove my identity for commercial purposes (e.g. taking a loan, hiring a car) and I don’t mind doing that. What I object to is a mandatory electronic tattoo.
Guy/David
You both accept that proving identity is necessary and appropriate in certain situations. Yet you don’t seem to accept that stronger (more secure) identity is better than weaker identity (I have difficulty understanding why you think the new identity system will result in weaker identity through increased fraud and identity theft). Nor do you seem to concede that a stronger identity system would be beneficial in other areas such as policing.
Do we not already have lots of “voluntary, privately run, and market driven” systems.
We do, although there are problems with them – not least impediments put up by governments. However, they almost without exception refer back to some government issued identity and are therefore dependant on the value of that identity. And I really don’t see a way out of this problem – the ultimate dependence on governments for verification of identities.
the card will be used as a single reference for all government held information; it will extend beyond the governmental sphere and become compulsory in everyday transactions
The first is certainly part of the intention of the system and the second the experience elsewhere (where there is not legal barrier), but I don’t see either as particularly sinister and in most cases a benefit, e.g. through increased efficiency.
” e.g. through increased efficiency.”
Oh Christ, Phil, I wish you hadn’t said that.
I see “single point” and fear it will become a single point of failure.
I’d rather, if we had to have some form of ID, that it filled some use rather than being a document for the sake of having a document.
Phil,
Glad we’ve clarified that by “strong ID” you mean more “secure” ID. But what do you mean by that? Security for whom and under what circumstances? Making ID more difficult to forge doesn’t necessarily make forged ID more difficult to use, or false (not necessarily forged) ID more difficult to obtain. Providing a hard-to-forge single form of ID does however make life more difficult to conduct if you aren’t plugged into the criminal networks.
Further it isn’t better to have strong ID than weak ID. Most human individuals in modern societies have multiple lives and multiple identities of variable strengths for differing purposes. I want the option for my identity to suit my purpose. An informal, fragmented identity is neither easily stolen nor easily monitored, and allows us to compartmentalise our lives for our own security–and simply to live with the loose ends and disorder that characterise real people.
And no, I don’t concede a stronger identity system would be better for policing. Quite the reverse.
Identifying people is not a problem for the police ( where they have any business doing so). But “stronger” ID, more trusted ID, would be a criminals bonanza for various forms of fraud and confidence trick. At the same time policing the card itself would divert police resources from actually pursuing real crime. (Innocent people and political objectors will be the ones with lost forgotten or refused ID. The organised criminal, the terrorist, the spy will have his papers in order, and a consistent cv, and will be able to account for how he spends his time.)
Technology is good for civil liberties.
In paffenblog today is an article from NZ. Computerized voting machines are built with a back door so they can be “recalibrated”,ie voting records can be changed. In ”the moon is a harsh mistress’ this is how the libertarians insure that they’re ‘voted’ into power.
Technology is good for civil liberties.
In paffenblog today is an article from NZ. Computerized voting machines are built with a back door so they can be “recalibrated”,ie voting records can be changed. In ”the moon is a harsh mistress’ this is how the libertarians insure that they’re ‘voted’ into power.
OK, here’s a question. I’m not ‘normally domiciled’ in the UK. What is the situation for the hundreds of thousands of British expats when and if the ID card is introduced? Are we going to have to report to our embassies for the barcode to be tattooed on our necks? What if we don’t?
Interesting that Phil says that “However, they (market forms of identity) almost without exception refer back to some government issued identity and are therefore dependant on the value of that identity. “
This is the part where the thinking mistake creeps in. The short answer to Phil is “false”. It’s the other way round. I have never in my life of almost forty years been asked to produce my birth certificate, for example. All the bank accounts I’ve ever opened in Britain were on the strength of gas bills and phone bills – to be sent these by gas and phone companies I showed no identity of any form issued by government. A university accepted me to study based on me having been to a school, and that school accepted me to study there without asking for any paperwork, but because my mother had me show up for an entrance exam and gave a home address. None of my O levels or A levels required any proof that I was “me” separate from my teachers saying “yes, he is him” invigilating me and sending my exam papers in. The exam boards were and are private associations.
In other words, Phil, you’re wrong on this thought of yours I bolded above, and I believe you should rethink it because it is the central confusion of the pro-strong identity position. The state has had a minimal, in fact almost non-existent, role in any identity-related part of my life. My passport is the only document I ever needed to ask HMG for. No British employer ever asked me for state documents to prove I am me. (In fact, neither did any Continental employer – no employer ever has.)
No, identity does not issue from government. Government issues from us.
I understand your frustration when you say you know something about identity – I assume you mean the mechanics of bar codes, unique-number generation, strong encryption and so forth.
But please – think again about what you are saying about the basic view you have that some form of government-validated identity is vital to modern life. This is not only wrong, but wrong in a big way.
What is this life you lead and I do not, where nothing in your life works properly without state certification of your identity? You work in the army?
Mark-
“I have never in my life of almost forty years been asked to produce my birth certificate, for example. All the bank accounts I’ve ever opened in Britain were on the strength of gas bills and phone bills – to be sent these by gas and phone companies”
Is this really true? I guess I need to get out more.
From here in the US this sounds like a libertarian nirvana.
We carry our drivers licenses which act as state issued ID’s. There was a recent proposal for a national drivers license to tighten up the state procedures which are apparently too loose somewhere. Drivers licenses are used for ID for most financial transactions. If you don’t drive, you get a state ID at the same police station that gives the driving test and issues licenses. As I recall, I needed my birth certificate and my social security card (on which is prominently printed, hilariously, “NOT TO BE USED FOR IDENTIFICATION”) and some auto insurance certificates here in Texas. I believe that now they also check to see if you owe the state money or if you are up to date in your child support.
I have always felt that the ID card was the point at which I would draw my personal line in the sand, but I have been carrying one without realizing it for years, now that I think about it.
One further line that has not yet been crossed however is the work paper/internal passport. I would like to think a must-issue law would be a protection – that they could not be refused by the government. But then, if they could not be refused, why issue them in the first place?
The social security card is already a sort of work permit, in that you cannot be hired legally without one, ostensibly to combat illegal immigration. I have managed to avoid having to produce one so far by being an indepentent consultant. The biblical prophesy of not being able to buy or sell without the Mark not having yet materialized.
Damn this is depressing. I thought we were the freer ones and you British were the regimented society.
Why not just ignore them? It will be a very long time before they can begin to demand people show “ID” to gain access to state benefits. The crunch may come when commerce starts demanding ID for transactions involving cheques. But in Britain as in SA, I imagine cheques are on the way out.
The citizen in a democracy does not need to account to the state for his/her whereabouts, right to exist or lawful activities.
The police will not be able to “demand ze papers” without suspicion of a crime having been committed.
Since everyone already has an NHS/Social Security number, I can’ t see how the authorities are going to enforce the holding of an ID card. And large numbers of refuseniks will create a bureaucratic nightmare.
On the bright side–what! optimism from GH?–there are actually quite a lot of people already without NHI and NHS numbers (nor passports, nor driving licenses, nor bank accounts)…
A British acquaintance of mine was working overseas or in the informal economy until the age of 42 without benefit of an NHI number. They only had to have themselves tagged in order to go to University. I might add (for the delight of making the security-nuts’ flesh creep) that the overseas career was with airlines.
Doug Collins wrote:
The social security card is already a sort of work permit, in that you cannot be hired legally without one, ostensibly to combat illegal immigration. I have managed to avoid having to produce one so far by being an indepentent consultant. The biblical prophesy of not being able to buy or sell without the Mark not having yet materialized.
Not just for getting a job. I got a #!$#@!$ juror questionnair from the county commissioner of jurors, on which I was required to give my SSN. I seem to recall having to include it on college admissions applications (for private schools, not just state universities) as well. It’s a de facto ID number, although Big Government types will insist that was never their intention (wink, wink).
Glad to have cheered you up (or made you envious?), Doug!
Of course, I closed by asking if Phil was working for the army – and there are clearly other Brits who have had much more “identity”-entwined lives than mine.
But yes, I think there is quite a lot of ignoring of paperwork by sensible officials in Britain – much of which I documented in an earlier exchange with Phil (where I droned on and on a bit, I’m afraid….) about individual clerks at some banks in Britain cashing a cheque for me with no identity beyond me suggesting they phone my mother, my mother’s signature looking right on the cheque, and their (correct) judgement that I look and am honest.
Picking up from several posters here, I smell a rat. If we already have a total identity culture (the “what difference does it make?” objection) then why does power want the extra step if it does them no good? Obviously we don’t have it yet.
But if we do not already have the total identity culture, then it is clear we do not need it.
We are doing fine with the system we have already. Which in Britain includes healthy doses of trust and common sense. Trust can be abused by criminals. But so can any numbering system, only the abuse of strong identity is worse because individuals can abdicate responsibility from checking and using common sense, so strong identity will mean more crime and identity theft will occur.