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It is all about command and control The Guardian reports that ID cards are to be pilot tested in ‘a small market town’ by the home office. Biometrics will be tested – facial, iris and fingerprint recognition systems.
I am horrifiied that the government is inching towards making us instantly identifiable and knowing too much. Once they have ID cards they will be that much nearer to integrating tax and passport systems, no doubt under the cover of anti-terrorist rhetoric. “To be controlled in our economic pursuits means to be…controlled in everything” said Hayek. To control us they need to know us, this is a fight we must not lose.
Paul Staines
Ed. update: White Rose has more on the subject as it keeps a closer eye on issues of ID cards, privacy, surveillance and other vagaries of state…
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So, what is necessary to prevent it?
A sufficient body of sustained public objection, I suggest. Most people don’t seem to object to being controlled at all. Is there a large enough number who object sufficiently to make the scheme politically impossible before implementation?
The problem is that mild objectors become bored or are flexiible, but the bureaucratic machine is remorseless and takes up any slack.
Poll-tax.
The task here is to make the argument so that it hits people where they live.
We have to come with arguments as to why this is going to make peoples live immediately worse. Not arguments about “liberty” and “freedom”.
I think the cost is one issue. The risk of having your ID easily stolen is another. The fears of a police state is a third.
Give people enough immediate reasons and then something might happen.
Eamon
Guy Herbert – You are right. Most mild objectors are actually flexible and open to an opposing argument. Eamon Brennan is also right – those against ID cards must come up with completely selfish reasons for refusing to cooperate. Forget liberty and democracy. I would also say forget fears of a police state because the British are very much of an “It can’t happen here” mentality – even when it patently is happening in front of their eyes. Most people will continue to chunter along believing they have liberty and democracy because they keep being told so. Tell them ID cards will be used for tax espionage, for stealing identities and lumbering them with someone else’s debt, for falsifying mortgage and loan documents and credit card applications, for robbing them of their state pension rights. This is what will get their attention.
Two observations spring to mind.
The first is that the previous system was wrenched from the Government’s grasp simply because ordinary people would no longer tolerate being forced to ‘show your papers’ by miserable functionaries trying to wield their spurious authority.
It wasn’t defeated by the big arguments about ‘liberty’ and ‘individual freedom’ (both of which I believe) – it was the sheer effrontery of petty bureaucrats that finally made one man rebel and fight a legal case.
My second observation is that the behaviour of this filthy little government of pocket totalitarians, surely, must finally scotch any pretence that the Left has anything to offer in the way of individual liberty? For decades, socialists have managed to portray the Right as the natural opponents of liberty when, demonstrably, individual freedoms always suffer more under the yoke of the Left.
This is a point we need to make again and again – not just to ourselves, who already know these things – but in our daily lives, until it finally penetrates the public consciousness. It cannot be said too often.
Yes, “liberty & democracy” in this country have always been ideals in which people fondly believed but which never stood up to close examination: the Establishment has always been profoundly intolerant of real dissent, real individualism, and “the people” are frankly complacent & apathetic. I’m curious about the “small market town” to be used for ID card tests. They’ll have to do it voluntarily, at this stage, so what inducement will be offered to take part, and how many will join in? Who if any will lead local opposition: the local Labour Party, the Tories, CA representatives (hah!) or somebody else..? Which if any national newspapers will present the case against? I await answers with no great sense of optimism.
People, we have our work cut out on this one.
Practically everyone I know just trots out the hoary old “if you’ve nothing to hide…” nonsense.
Bread and circuses may have done for us, I fear.
I heard the conservative columnist Peter Hitchens give a talk at the Edinburgh Book Festival a few days ago. The audience was split 50/50 between older Daily Telegraph types who supported his string-em-up approach to criminals and younger Guardian types who were mocking him.
Until it got to ID cards.
One of the Telegraph types said: “What’s the problem. I had a ration card during the War. I have a pension book. If you’re not guilty of anything, you have nothing to worry about.” The other older folk largely agreed. Hitchens went ballistic and denounced ID cards, said that he would refuse to carry one and explained how a computerised system would destroy liberty, especially in the hands of New Labour. The Guardian readers cheered him! Perhaps younger people are more aware of the power of computerised databases and are generally less trusting of our “rulers” than older people.
The technocrat in me suspects that the state’s ability to identify-control is very imminent. The Pentagon has a project in the works where existing CCTV networks can have there images integrated and analysed to create a totally monitored environment. Computer processing power has grown such that an electronic Big Brother can watch you easily – facial recognition is improving in leaps and bounds. The technologically successful number-plate recognition system that runs the London congestion charging system shows what is possible.
So, on security grounds, the various central London CCTV networks could be hooked up, a face fed into the system and the computers will find you. That is state power, anonymity and privacy are bulwarks against an oppressive state.
I have a CCTV camera which can point at my riverside bedroom from 20 feet away- and I’m on the fourth floor. Spooky!
The only barrier remaining to the Big Brother state is civil and political opposition – the technological obstacles are withering.
In response to this piece a few months ago, I made this comment, which I think is worth repeating:
One argument against ID cards, which might be effective against liberty-sceptics, I heard from a policeman, who was speaking on the phone-in following _Any Questions_. He said that he would never carry anything which showed his address, because it was known for muggers to hospitalise their victims, find their addresses on something in their wallets and then go and burgle their houses, which were more likely to be empty.
It suggests a simple retort to anyone who uses the “nothing to hide, nothing to fear” refrain: “But you do have things to hide. One example is the times when your house is empty. Can you think of any more?”
For many years one of the Anti-American mantras of the Left has been to castigate IBM for their work in setting up early computerising of government records…..in that case it was Adolf Hitlers operation.
Now we have the specticle of a Prime Contractor to the U.S. Military doing the same thing again, allbeit, starting in Britian, for another Facsist operation.
Underneath all the bullshit….errr…regulations from the EU you are going to find the long-term requirement that ALL member countries are to merge their country’s databases into a common data-bank.
This is actually going to be fun to watch……
An area you may try to pursue is to draw attention to monies spent on purchases and how much did you fudge on your taxes…..
I would be looking for another word to replace “enroll”…..something that carries at the very least negative connotations.
Try not to forget about all the security holes that keep turning up in computer systems…..and how often is the “system down”.
What is Scotland Yard’s success rate in computer crime ??
What country would you prefer to have manufactured your ID card recoding equipment ??
In fashionable Leftist form the Canadian Government just blew a Billion Dollars trying to register every gun-owner and their weapons.
In the event the Peoples of Britian allows this system to go forward it will make the costs of running the NHS seem like “pocket change”.
Just a quick idea.
Find the town dress up as tranzis (EU nazis) and “demand” people show their ID cards.
Hand out free “bar-code” tattoos in exchange.
Very cheap, effective and publicity generating.
Shaun, you’re right.
The best way of fighting this might be to let it happen and watch it collapse. The government are even worse than my mother at keeping computerised records accurate and secure. They are planning to build a system that will make their power massively reliant on a system they won’t be able to handle. Let them build it, let them become reliant on it, and watch their hold on power crumble; watch the CPS swamp their own courts with erroneous cases; watch the police become useless as they spend ever more time maintaining databases. And then say “I told you so.”
Or am I too much the optimist?
Andrew Duffin wrote:
Practically everyone I know just trots out the hoary old “if you’ve nothing to hide…” nonsense.
Then tell them you’ll post all their financial data on your web-site for all the world to see. And if you have a blog, tell them you’ll use it to gossip about them. 🙂
Squander Two: […]watch the CPS swamp their own courts with erroneous cases; watch the police become useless as they spend ever more time maintaining databases.
You are too much the optimist. You assume they’ll admit that cases are erroneous and the courts will catch them at it. The couts have an astonishing capacity to suck up utter nonsense when peddled by a prosecution expert. (E.g. the 70 million-to-one
assertion in the Sally Clarke case.)
The police meanwhile will take enormous pleasure in arresting people purely on the basis of their “infallible” databases without having to leave a nice warm office.
Paul Staines: “So, on security grounds, the various central London CCTV networks could be hooked up, a face fed into the system and the computers will find you. That is state power, anonymity and privacy are bulwarks against an oppressive state.”
Without face-recognition software this can be, and already is, done. All they need is to know your starting point, or your rough whereabouts from a phone, and you can be visually followed from camera to camera–in places such as the West End in real-time… Trouble is, until a computer can do it, not everyone can be watched all the time. However older police-states have shown how much can be done with a suspect-list.
> You assume they’ll admit that cases are erroneous and the courts will catch them at it.
Oh no, I don’t. I assume that there’ll be so many of them that people will notice whether the courts admit it or not. If I recall correctly, current estimates for the accuracy of the DVLI’s database are about 70%-80%. Extrapolate that across other databases and multiply to account for increased error rates caused by trying to merge data from different systems. We’re not looking at the occasional erroneous case; we’re looking at so many that most people will know someone (or, at least, know someone who knows someone) who ended up in court despite being totally innocent. The media’ll be all over it, not because they care about freedom or justice, but because plenty of journalists will be affected. Government denials won’t work. There’s nothing like hundreds of obviously innocent people in jail to drum up a bit of public opposition.
> The police meanwhile will take enormous pleasure in arresting people purely on the basis of their “infallible” databases without having to leave a nice warm office.
Yeah, but this is self-defeating. When the police go out and hassle innocent people, they at least pick on people who look guilty. If they work from computer files, that’s not going to happen. They’ll be arresting polite little old ladies from Sandwich and white middle-aged postmen from Shrewsbury, and people will notice.
Basically, what I’m saying is that, until these things happen, we’re fighting the battle on hypothetical grounds, and the only people we’ll convince are the ones who already agree with us. Let the government go ahead, and they’ll quickly create thousands of concrete real-life examples for us to use against them.
It’s the same as Communism. Tell people in 1910 that it was a bad idea and would inevitably lead to abuse of power, and no-one was interested. Tell a Czech the same thing in 1960, and he agreed with all his heart. And, yes, I can see the obvious and huge problem with this approach.
> You are too much the optimist.
Yeah, I know. But, in my defense, I am also too much the pessimist.