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Year zero? This is not some silly idea of the phoney left. It is a mainstream idea of modern times. It is a new kind of identity and a new kind of freedom. I respect the noble Lords’ views, but it would help if they respected the fact that the Bill and the identity cards represent the future: a new kind of freedom and a new kind of identity.
– Lord Gould of Brookwood (most decidedly New Labour) speaking at yesterday’s Committee of the Whole House on the Identity Cards Bill.
Chilling, eh?
I file this under “Self ownership” because the Bill (do read it) seeks to end all that sort of thing. No more of the messy business of people deciding for themselves who they are and how much to involve the government in their lives.
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One of the sly ploys of this government has been to call it an “ID card”. To most people, that just means one more card to carry in their wallets. They’ve got their debit cards, their credit cards, their loyalty cards, their swipe cards, their driver’s licenses. What’s one more card?
If the government had said, “We’re going to gather four pages of intimate information about you and hold it on government files and share it with whomever we deem appropriate” people may have said, “Hey! Wait a minute!”
Orwell was truly truly a prophet. There is only one kind of freedom and what Gould is saying is no different than “freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength”.
I do not buy the idea that people like him are essentially well intentioned folks who do not really understand the implications of what they are doing. Gould is a malevolent man in the company of other malevolent men who wish to exert as much control as they possibly can over everyone in
Airstrip OneBritain.How can you possibly have a “new kind of freedom”?
What the hell are we going to do about these people?
Clearly in the case of “Lord” Gould, not vote him out of office. This crony is there for life.
Spot on Perry.
How is an ID card different to a passport? I’m just asking as it seems I’m carrying and showing my passport a lot these days. It doesn’t bother me to do so, since I am actually who it says I am.
“A new kind of liberty”.
What is that? Can you put it on top of a salad or something?
Can you be stopped on the street and be required to prove your identity because you have a passport? Does your passport identify you to a central database everytime the state has some interaction with you? Can the state require your bank to use your passport each time you visit them and conduct some busness so that a central database is notified everytime?
THAT is what is going to happen when a manditory ID card and centralised database are imposed.
The only times you are ‘required’ to produce your passport is for validation of identity when entering and occasionally leaving the UK, opening of a clearing bank current or deposit account, withdrawals away from your usual bank and sometimes for certain online transactions – such as validation of eBay seller accounts.
Under the new ‘ID card’ rules you might have to produce your ID card in order to use your credit card above a certain value of purchase, purchase a ticket for mainline rail services or an underground season ticket, get a job, stay at a hotel and a myriad of other things that we take for granted in the UK. There’s a BIG difference as I’m sure you will agree.
Julian Taylor writes:
“The only times you are ‘required’ to produce your passport is for validation of identity when entering and occasionally leaving the UK, opening of a clearing bank current or deposit account, withdrawals away from your usual bank and sometimes for certain online transactions – such as validation of eBay seller accounts.”
Really? I have opened (and closed) many bank accounts in my time and never once have I even been asked to show my passport – let alone been required to.
Are you, perhaps, receiving special treatment?
“Under the new ‘ID card’ rules you might have to produce your ID card in order to use your credit card above a certain value of purchase, purchase a ticket for mainline rail services or an underground season ticket, get a job, stay at a hotel and a myriad of other things that we take for granted in the UK. There’s a BIG difference as I’m sure you will agree.”
And Zanu Labour can make this work? Unless cards can be scanned at Mrs Crunns boarding house and every poxy little station which connects to a mainline all that will happen is it will only pick up those with nothing to hide.Others will nick a car in Birmingham and blow it up in London.
What if, as opposed to “a new kind of identity”, you like your old kind of identity? The one that comes from your mother and father and clan? What “new kind of freedom”? In what way are these oily negotiators trying to persuade normal people that the ZaNu-Lab party is making people free-er than they were as their birthright in ancient Britain before Tony Twerpy hissed in?
“Lord Gould of Brockworth” (snigger) got a new identity all right! Where was he before he got his “new identity” and “new kind of freedom”? In a psychiatric ward somewhere?
Julian: The only times you are ‘required’ to produce your passport is for validation of identity when entering and occasionally leaving the UK,[…]
Even that shows how far our society has been subverted by the culture of bureaucratic compliance. The notional function of a passport is to allow you to be recognised abroad as a citizen of this or that country, and (where visas are required) to carry evidence of entitlement to enter a particular country. Its legal function is to show status and entitlement, not “identity”.
Nor is it travel authorisation from the state (something that only existed in the Russian Empire a century ago)–though the Identity Cards Bill in passing (cl.40) would create the category of “travel authorisation” for both passports and ID cards without explaining it. You do not in theory require a passport to enter or leave the UK as a UK citizen; the practice is entirely different, because of the obligations on carriers and the arbitrary powers of the Immigration Service.
Banks are compelled to “Know their Customer” thorough formal documentation and so are others, but the requirements are left up to them (though officials may decide retrospectively that they haven’t got it right and impose severe punishments), so they play safe and demand passports where they can. Have you instructed a solicitor or bought a house or exchanged currency, of late, GCooper?
Note that a passport is not an entitlement. If granted, at the discretion of the Home Secretary, it can be confiscated at any time.
Recently a man was convicted of obtaining, 20-odd years ago, a passport in someone else’s name. He had lived openly and legally under that name (you are entitled to call yourself what you like), and had children. Those children have just had their passports confiscated, as having been issued “in false names”–despite those names being the only ones they have ever had.
Now, Carol, imagine that practice as applied to an ID card. (As it will be: read the Bill). The Home Secretary (or a bureacrat acting in his name, or a computer glitch or an idle or malevolent clerk) would decide who you are, whether you have capacity to exercise any ordinary civic functions, whether you officially exist at all. The prerogative state extended everywhere. “e-Borders” everywhere.
New Labour, New Britain. Freedom is slavery.
The objection to the new ID card is not necessarily the card itself, it’s the database backing it up. Having one card to cover the functions of passport, driving licence, National Insurance card etc sounds convenient – only one card to lose instead of three, more space in the wallet for for credit cards or family photos, and no more trying to remember what you did with the last gas bill when you need to open a bank account.
What I object to is knowing there will be a database holding details of my travels, of my driving, health and employment records. This will be administered by someone like Capita, Gap Gemini or EDS on behalf of the government, and we know their records for delivery of public projects. How confident can we be that information held will be accurate? What defence is there if I find I cannot drive or travel because someone with similar details to me has commited an offense and the details have been wrongly input on the database? The database is so big there must be more errors.
I have nothing to hide; the only crimes I have committed are occasional speeding, and commenting on blogs on my employer’s time.
For more on this, Philip Johnston’s article in Monday’s Telegraph is worth reading: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2005/11/14/do1402.xml
To be fair, this is not uncommon in the US. I had to produce identity when buying a $30 DVD in Houston with my credit card, let alone anything of high value. Same deal for a $70 pair of boots and a $200 jacket. It’s fun producing a British driving licence and answering the inevitable question – “which state is Britain in?” Strangely enough, I’ve never been asked for proof of identity anywhere in Europe doing similar or more expensive things.
Haven’t bought a house for 6 years, but I’ve never been asked to produce identity when instructing a solicitor (which I have done recently). I have been asked for it when changing currency, but only in America.
I don’t say this to slag off America, merely to point out that some of the dire consequences predicted for the ID card system don’t seem to happen in Europe (where many countries have long had mandatory ID), but do already happen on a regular basis in the Land of the Free ™, which does not have such a system. I cannot but feel that such apocalyptic warnings are histrionic over-reaction and not a little paranoid.
I think a pertinent question is why states without ID systems make these demands, but states that do have them don’t.
EG
It is a pertinent and worthwhile question, but perhaps ill-posed as you put it.
US demands for ID aren’t (except in relation to alcohol and very recently travel) generally imposed by the state, the states, or federal government. They don’t link to an audit trail but substantiate the instant transaction. And much of it is to do with commercial paranoia about fraud, which itself is faciliatated by the widespread use of Social Security numbers and “ID”.
UK demands are very largely driven by regulation and an official desire for oversight of relationships do demand information be kept. We are otherwise more trusting than Americans, or perhaps more keyed to soft social cues and less rule-bound, like our European neighbours.
There are lots of differences between continental ID systems and the British proposal. They are generally old and not conceived as total information awareness systems. They usually derive from political and not social-managerial objectives. They are embedded in societies where the state is very variously trusted, and very variously subject to constitutional limits. And they are almost all decentralised.
My experience of “rule-bound” countries is that suprisingly often the rules are simply ignored, and when they are observed it is often just paying lip service. In countries which aren’t rule bound, arbitrary demands often spring up and there is no consistency in them, but people can be extremely pedantic about demanding “their” rules be followed. Overall, I feel less constrained in practice (rather than in theory) in rule bound states, because there is always a way around the rules in those cases where they are actually observed.
I don’t for a moment think the UK ID system will work. Nearly half a billion has been spent on a computer system to calculate 15% of someone’s salary, and it still doesn’t work (CSA). I have to pay the CSA, and have managed to bring it to chaos in my case by paying 70p a month more than demanded. The project to computerise the NHS records system is ridiculously over budget and late, with no sign of it ever working. Why the hell I should be concerned about the most ambitious IT program in the history of the known universe actually working is beyond me – it won’t work, and it will be largely ignored.
I’m not concerned with theoretical liberties and rights. I am concerned with practical constraints, and I don’t expect any from this system.
EG
I’m not going to comment on whether ID cards and the National Indentity Register are worthwhile/intrusive/dangerous because the debate could rumble on forever.
Obviously NuLab and Emperor Toninuss will give you the weak, vapid, incoherent and incorrect arguments for or the lone supporter (who happens to be one of theirs) will live in his bubble but unfortunately there are some fairly rational reasons not to oppose ID cards.
When the former M herself (Stella Rimmington) quite plainly opines “… I don’t think anybody in the intelligence services – not in my former service – will be pressing for ID cards.” you have to wonder how much ‘they’ know about ‘us’ already.
Are the No2IDer’s fighting a losing battle?
(Just in case the fat lady isn’t singing yet, if you haven’t signed the pledge then do it! )
EG – FYI.
The Carrefours, along with car hire companies, etc. etc. on the Spanish costas, consistenly ask for passport ID when making even quite modest purchases using cedit cards.. Fraud being so prevalent in that part of the world, it is hardly surprising that they do all they can to identify a customer. Whether such measures are effective or not, is another matter.
I don’t say this to slag off the EU, merely to point out that some of the dire consequences predicted for the ID card system ‘do’ seem to happen in Europe
With money laundering and terrorism so rife, it would be quite dilatory if commercial enterprises did not take even small measures to protect their, – and ultimately – their clients interests…
Euan:
You were, most likely, asked for ID only because you were using a card from a non-U.S. bank. Even “uncommon” is too strong a word for the frequency of ID checks with purchases (unless it’s booze or ciggies you’re trying to buy).
EG, I too have been asked many times to provide some other form of ID when using a card in the USA. UK Amex cards especially do not seem to work too well over there.
I normally reply to the “What state is Britain in?” question with the answer, “a truly bad one”.
But when they ask for identification BEFORE even looking at your card, it becomes obvious that this is a much more ingrained habit than simply verifying foreign issued cards.
EG
Euan, evidently you’re quite a dodgy-looking bloke.
Seriously, were these mom-and-pops or chain stores this happened in, and what part of the country? And had you swiped your card in a reader before the request? (Most times nowadays the clerk never handles my card.) What you’re describing simply does not square with my everyday life in this crazy, mixed-up land we call ‘Murica.
Chains, in all cases, in Houston and San Antonio. Funnily enough, the smaller places never seemed to ask.
No, hence my point about ID being requested before the card was even looked at.
Didn’t happen every time, but the point I was making is that I have been asked multiple times for identification when buying stuff on my card in the US, but never in Europe. The question is why a supposedly free nation seems to ask for identity a lot more than supposedly dirigiste big-state nations.
EG
Fraud-control initiatives on the part of the chains, I would guess. Certainly ain’t the gubmint making them do it — not yet, anyway.
If you were getting carded in Texas, though, it must be because Verity tipped them off about you.
EG,
I think – and have done so for quite a while – that you do like to exaggerate to reinforce a point… why would anyone ask for ID before you make any attempt to pay?
Teens trying to buy cigs or booze – yes, middle aged men buying DVD’s – no! Oh! maybe you were wearing your kilt!…
As for the ‘Which state is Britain in’ remark – I’ll wager you made that up as well…
I don’t.
If I knew the answer, I don’t suppose I’d be asking the question, now would I?
I don’t wear skirts. In any case, the kilt is, like the system of clan tartans, an English invention of the early Victorian fascination with Scottish “culture,” such as it is. Nowadays, of course, it is simply a means of extracting cash from the sort of people who can be persuaded that Eagleburger is a cadet branch of the clan MacDonald…
Then you’d lose your bet.
Since I’d never before been asked for ID when buying anything anywhere, I was surprised at the time and mentioned it to another British man working in my office. He confirmed that it seemed to be a common enough practice in the US, certainly far more so than in many other places (he’s also fairly widely travelled), and said he had also been asked the “which state is Britain in” question several times. Given that some 80% of Americans have never even had a passport (contrasted to some 80% of Britons who do hold one) and that anything happening outside Harris County gets relegated to page 92 of the Houston Chronicle, this isn’t altogether surprising. It’s neither good nor bad, of course, just different, and illustrative of a culture that is in places markedly more parochial than the one from which I come.
EG
“The objection to the new ID card is not necessarily the card itself, it’s the database backing it up. “
Correct.
And how can you stop the government from setting up and maintaining that database ? It can be easily done, using existing records, without any new legislation, or a fancy piece of plastic.
You can’t keep government (or anybody else) from using new technology.
MarkE at 9:07 said
Hmmm…..
Or as Perry said,
“Powerful, corrupting and impersonal. The Ring is of course an allegory for the modern state.”(Link)
And the cheerful thing about the British government using new technology is, they are utterly inept.
Remember the passport fiasco and there were queues of hundreds of people outside the Home Office in the rain and the deeply inadequate Jack Straw passed out umbrellas? And Britain is a first world country?
EG,
I woudn’t expect you to say otherwise…
Why the hell I should be concerned about the most ambitious IT program in the history of the known universe actually working is beyond me – it won’t work, and it will be largely ignored.
Does the fact that we will be paying for this IT trainwreck not tick you off at all?
I doubt it will even get that far, to be honest. The pessimistic estimates of the total cost of the ID card scheme amount to something like 5 or 6 months expenditure on the NHS, and it will not come in a single hit. I doubt if anyone would actually notice the cost. Not that that justifies is, but I don’t think people are going to take to the streets over it.
The state spends some £450 billion per annum. £30 billion spread over 5 to 10 years is not significant in that context (potentially, less than 1% of annual expenditure in the years expense is incurred).
EG
Quite. Which is why I for one am rather fed up with crude cost arguments.
In practice I suspect the cost argument might be saved by the technological (and accounting) incompetence of the Government. Two factors:
1. If it is seriously intended to do what they say it is intended to do, then my guess is it will turn out vastly more expensive than even well-known “pessimistic” estimates. My grounds for this are not the hopeless game of attempting to second-guess the Home Office’s semi-secret figures, but looking at their previous worst results and scaling up the overrun on the official estimate for size and complexity. I’d buy points over 60Bn: still peanuts against social security, I know.
2. The compliance costs (which no-one seems to be thinking about) will hit people where they notice, at the point of interaction with the system, rather than through PAYE and VAT.
Mind you, I don’t care what it costs. You can pay me and I still won’t have it.
The saddest thing about ID cards is that mass objections only started when told that “they would have to pay for it”. As if before then, Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy were going to pick up the tab.
I heard a Home Office talking head on the World at One today. I can’t be bothered to recall his name, as all NuLabor lickspittles are so similar, though I don’t think this one was Scottish.
He was gracious enough to admit that cost and practicality were valid concerns, thus implying that no-one sensible could contest the ethos of this authoritarian project. No doubt his handlers fed him this line. Nothing new there, but he did claim that he had debated with the authors of the LSE report, and forced them to back down on their costings which came in at about £300 per card. Now, of course I disbelieve anything I am told by any lying mouthpiece of this lying government of liars, but does anyone have any knowledge of where he was coming from with that particular lie?
I imagine it was Andy Burnham MP, who has been given the job of front man for the whole project, which will either make his political career or destroy it. The poor man has to cope with Home Office briefs as well as push the current selling line.
The latest government spin which he has been pushing is that “the LSE has admitted it is wrong”. Which the LSE denies here.
Not only does the government graciously admit there are practical concerns, it is using this admission to play two other rhetorical tricks, as Mr Burnham did at a House of Lords meeting I attended last week. I paraphrase:
1. ‘All the problems are practical, very few people care about the (legitimate) civil liberties questions on principle.’ Which neatly redefines all the questions of principle in the structuring of the scheme and the technology as practical ones. A false dilemma: either don’t do it on grounds of airy-fairy “civil liberties” or discuss how practically we implement the Home Office’s predetermined model.
Actually there are questions of principle quite apart from the principle of the legitimacy or otherwise of an ID card per se for liberty’s sake: Constitutional questions, privacy questions, legal questions, questions about appropriateness of delegated authority and legislation, questions of management, institutional structures, technological concept and security, purpose and scope. All those are skipped over.
2. ‘Critics are opposed in principle, and are only addressing the practical questions we are concerned with here because they know they have no public support.’ You are estopped from making a subsidiary argument with which you agree and may or may not be correct, because you believe something else that the Goverment says the public doesn’t support. This neatly also allows dismissal of any claim that government- defined ‘practicalities’ are in fact questions of principle. Because you are opposed on the one principle that the government admits to exist–chosen for its vagueness– any attempt to elucidate any further questions of principle is driven by interest, thus morally invalid, thus fraudulent.
The message is:
1. ‘We’re doing it this way, and it is popular. Your duty is to help us make it work. Otherwise you are a wrecker and enemy of the people.’
2. ‘All opponents are lying. Don’t listen to them.”
“New Freedom” – it puts me in mind not only of President Wilson (see the work of his crony and “other self” E. M. House “Philip Dru Administrator” for just how collectivist this democracy-as-freedom could have been). But also of “Radical Joe” Mayor of Birmingham back in 1865 (father of the Prime Minister in the late 1930’s) – with the thesis that when government is not democratic it should have limited powers, but when it is democratic it should lots of nice things for the people.
Thomas Paine and many of the Revolutionaries in France had the same view – the power of Kings should be limited (if Kings were to be allowed to exist at all) but a Democratic government should actuall do more things that the old King did – as long as these things “help the people”.
Perhaps the confusion can (without going back to the debates of the Classical World) can be traced back to John Locke with his pretence (in the second T.) that majority consent is somehow the same as individual consent.
The “new freedom” will be felt by citizens everywhere, as governments are replaced by societies that are self governing. This is no longer a pipe dream. We now have the technology to do this.
But how?
The first step is to understand how the new society works. Each person creates and maintains their own accountability, which will essentially be non-repuditable. Think of it as a database, which you create for you, and no-one else has access to it – unless you specifically allow them to. Access doesn’t mean copying the data out of it – it means running “queries” like one normally does on a database. You have the option to block any and all queries. Where you wish to transact with someone, you may allow a query that satisfies them that they want to transact with you.
We don’t need ANY person to hold themselves above us, and make decisions for us. We use new electronic voting systems that scale each vote according to the reputation that each person has thus far built, and using new protocols that truly are both secure and respect privacy totally. And when we do vote, we vote on issues, not on whether someone is being given the right to make decisions for us.
Gone will be the days of money (“tax”) being wrenched from the hardest workers, to keep alive, those of us that are trying to survive in a world that does not recognise the good that is in every one of us, even those that were not to the manor born.
It is both the tax payers and the social welfare cheats, that are the victims. The real criminals are those that continue to make decisions that provide a nice comfortable life for themselves, while continuing to ignore the real needs of the people.
We want – no we DEMAND our privacy, and we DEMAND a social system which gives back, the ability for each person to assert their reputation for their own good. If I earn money, I get to spend it. If I earn a good reputation, that is valuable and should be able to be used for my benefit.
Why do young people form gangs? Because their own reputation can no longer be effectively built/felt in a society with such population density and high levels of movement, that they form groups that together, make their reputation felt, and each one attains the respect from others, that the group has earned. It isn’t ideal, but it’s all that we have.
Those in power, hear now, we will be silent no more.
You wear the mask of a person that has the total respect of all, yet your decisions continue to serve only yourself.
The best way to let people know that we won’t be taking this shit any more, is to put on your own mask – and I suggest black balaclavas and dark sunglasses – and go about your daily business of shopping, withdrawing cash from the ATM, opening credit card accounts etc, whilst of course obeying all “laws” and showing “ID Cards” to those that would lock us up if we fail to do so.
If the government can’t see our Identity and the good in us without ID cards, then give them what they want. But also let them realise that it may not be the best answer after all.
Oh, and until such time that we get broad support for this campaign, I suggest that you stay out of banks unless you are also wearing your bullet-proof vests 🙂
When we may line up peacefully in banks with ID Cards pinned to our chest, with black balaclavas and dark sunglasses on all, we have reached our first goal.
Warning, the article referenced below is VERY long, and contains many highly technical details, aimed at those capable of building the appropriate infrastructure:
http://noveltyvalue.blogspot.com
Probably about the time of the successful Congolese mission to Jupiter, I suspect.
EG
Guy Herbert:
Thanks for the link. I think you were right about the name of the NuLabor pod person in question.
I’m afraid he got away with his lie about the LSE on the World at One, and the only reason I knew it was a lie was because all NuLabor ministers lie habitually and plausibly. It sounded to me as if that would be something he would lie about, and so it was.
The LSE has been far too gentlemanly and dare I say academic about this. Their press release is too dense, and gives NuLabor a bit of wriggle room, which they know all too well how to exploit. Journos are lazy, and can’t be bothered to read a press release like that. It needs to have a banner heading along the lines of “LSE condemns Minister’s lies” followed by about three bullet points using short words. Trying to be decent and scholarly when opposing NuLabor is like turning up to a gunfight with a knife.
Their press release is too dense, and gives NuLabor a bit of wriggle room, which they know all too well how to exploit. Journos are lazy, and can’t be bothered to read a press release like that.
That’s an epitome of the whole problem, and of much of the New Labour project. To oppose a deliberately obscure scheme requires enlisting some understanding in others. To drive it forward it is sufficient to maintain the fog under of comforting slogans. A banner that says “Down with this sort of thing!” is not good enough to arrest a public that can’t see what the fuss is about.