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Ineptitude and malevolence in equal measure I oppose the ID card & panoptic centralised database plans of the UK government on the grounds it is a monstrous abridgement of civil liberties and truly deadly expansion of state power… but even on the utilitarian basis of the state’s own objectives, the entire scheme is a disaster in the making. This comes not from some civil rights activist but from an IBM researcher whose specialty is secure ID cards.
The big issue is that the UK government, plans to set up a central database containing volumes of data about its citizens. Unlike other European governments, most of whom already use some form of ID card, the central database will allow connections between different identity contexts – such as driver, taxpayer, or healthcare recipient – which compromises security. Centrally-stored biometric data would be attractive to hackers, he said, adding that such data could be made anonymous but that the UK Government’s plans do not include such an implementation.
Read the whole article.
(hat tip to commenter Shaun Bourke)
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Seems to me the National Identity Register scheme is one of those which pop up from time to time, and which are so obviously and irreducibly damaging that they somehow never quite manage to make it into being.
Since we’re having daily demonstrations of the incompetence of the Home Office, and their arrogance (ie, wrongly criminalising thousands of people, and then refusing to apologise – good grief, who the hell to they think they are?), it beggars belief that anyone believes an identity register wouldn’t merely spread a vast and vastly expensive pall of mistrust across the nation, in all areas.
The experience of that incompetence will, of course, rapidly mean that as soon as the NIR comes online (which it never will) we’ll be rushing to find other ways of proving who we are, as companies cotton on to the dangers of relying on the NIR! Is this not already obvious?
The only way in which the NIR can actually come about is if both Labour and Tories agree on it. At this stage in the game, a simple “no” from Cameron will stop it in its tracks.
National Identity Scheme: that’s my field (along with Guy); what fun.
There is just one problem for me: this is very definitely not a propitious time to argue for, or even not totally against, anything tainted by the yucky fingers of the Home Office or the Blair government. It would be, I strongly suspect, wasted effort.
However, I do view quite a bit of the opinion in Perry’s referenced article as nonsense. Not least, without a central (or near central) record of who is registered, what do you do when someone loses, or claims to have lost, their card. Next, how do you deal with people trying to obtain multiple identities (for criminal purposes) by registering different names with 2+ regional/partitioned authorities; that is unless said authorities cross check registrations (and then whether one is better off on civil liberties is barely more than a matter of detailled law and implementation).
Yet again, I recommend a look at my presentation to a British Computer Society local group in November 2005 (36 slides). The presentation covers mostly technical aspects, and their implications. However, much of it is not technically overwhelming (perhaps not even difficult to the intellects here assembled). It explains (I hope) what is needed to make the scheme work, and some reasons why it might not work well enough to be useful, or cost-effective.
If the response here is better than just gut feel anti, I’ll feel more inclined to contribute further (even in the current political climate). And please don’t assume I am in favour of the scheme; as it currently stands, I certainly am not. I just think it would be better to give the technology a fair hearing, and then decide on the basis of political purpose, civil liberties and technological capability all combined. That is with the possibility of something much better that aweful bill so recently passed.
Best regards
But why are they doing this? Everybody must be aware that this is a train-wreck waiting to happen. Has the Home Orifice even done a back of an envelope calculation as to the logistics of registering 50+ million people?
I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but… Something is up in government and for once it isn’t Prescott’s dishonourable member. Any ideas would be appreciated from the commentariat, and for once, the more whacked out and Dan Brown-ish they are the better…
Nick M., one of my political journalist friends argues that MPs may try to force a vote of no confidence against Blair’s administration in weeks, if not days.
It is that bad.
Nigel, as I mentioned I oppose the whole notion of state mandated ID cards and (above all) data pooling and I only put up something on the technical aspects as a way of adding to the misery.
How it would actually work does not in truth interest me that much as what I really want is for it to not work at all.
You’re all mad.
The database is already here.
All we’re now talking about is the expense of using it.
Barcode them at birth, I say.
And you ain’t well informed.
Nope, what is here at the moment is a dog’s dinner of a great many very poorly integrated databases.
Perry wrote:
Nigel, as I mentioned I oppose the whole notion of state mandated ID cards and (above all) data pooling and I only put up something on the technical aspects as a way of adding to the misery.
How it would actually work does not in truth interest me that much as what I really want is for it to not work at all.
I am willing to accept that you (and Guy) will never move from the position of being totally against the National Identity Scheme. I also believe that you have no obligation to me or anyone else to justify your personal position. However, I would like to know.
However, if you wish to persuade me to the same position (very difficult, as I’ve thought about it lots, though not impossible), or halt me from arguing if and when you attempt to persuade others, I think you have to give reasons and hence subject at least some of them (those I do not agree with) to the counter arguments that I have.
As I have written elsewhere (30/03/06 at 10:39), my objections are more to the UK government bill (now passed into law) than to (most of) the concept (or my particular take on it).
Considering some fine points, would you object (much or at all) to a non-mandatory scheme? This would be with a true break from the likes of passport issue, but without ID scheme registration one would have to pay more for a passport on issue (and more but not so much on renewal) because more checks would have to be done.
Would you object so much (or at all) if the scheme was run by the Registrar General (expanding that role beyond births,marriages and deaths)?
Would you object if the scheme embodied all the protections outlined in my above link?
Would you object if it really only only cost on average say £5 per registered person per year to run the registration (including fair amortisation of capital costs), and every business that used it had to pay a fair and realistic charge for the use?
I’m sure that will do for now. If you have time and interest enough to answer, that would be appreciated. If not I’ll understand.
Best regards
“Barcode them at birth I say”.
I presume you were joking, right?
I am very much in favour, if we do have to have a system, of a phased system. I would see it beginning with drivers license extended using a form of credit card based system where we are given a “bill” of each time our ID was used or checked against each month, with the option to be SMS’d immediately that this x-ref occurs. This CC based system would then prevent people’d ID being stolen for very long. SMSing Visa usage works well in China.
Such a system should be run by multiple “ID providers” like Banks (who have an interest in making sure it WORKS).
People could try and have multiple IDs. If the state just keeps a single, bland list with one number per person (e.g. NI number) and a single code for their ID provider reference, then a fake ID would either not work or would be a spoof and trigger off the owner of the real ID.
If you suspect the real ID holder can blow your cover in hours or days, there is little you can do but keep jumpng from ID to ID, and so an ID could only really be used for petty theft and not long term fraud or “disappearance”.
Any person creating multiple IDs would be caught if the independent ID producers had a form of “clearing” where such IDs are checked.
It would nto be perfect in the early days when all we have is photo-ID and a bill of accesses, but it will stop many of the abuses and will not provide a police state with a vast database of our lives which they can hold over us.
Nigel,
Things are a little different in the real world.
Your presentation fails to go into the hardware and software areas let alone and how contracting is done and the end users of the system.
So let us take a brief excursion into the NHS and its 6+ BILLION Pound disaster.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/file_on_4/3754064.stm
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2136718.html
http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/-brutal-landing-nhs-computer-firm-/2006/05/10/1646199.htm
And now you want to add in most every other activity a citizen is involved in into a central National Database via a National ID card ????????
Probably not as the guy is a racist arsehole. However he probably just means barcode black people at birth.
To attempt an answer to Nigel’s questions for myself. (Perry can answer for himself.)
Considering some fine points, would you object (much or at all) to a non-mandatory scheme?
Provided it were genuinely voluntary (including being possible to withdraw from) and the state did not place disabilities on individuals who declined to participate, I could have no objection. (A few voluntary schemes do exist, mostly in connection with proof of drinking age. There seems to be little evidence of much general desire for such a thing.) But…
without ID scheme registration one would have to pay more for a passport on issue (and more but not so much on renewal) because more checks would have to be done.
Why more checks?
Would you object so much (or at all) if the scheme was run by the Registrar General (expanding that role beyond births,marriages and deaths)?
My objection is quite fundamental. A scheme that was merely an registration system and didn’t collect or share data across government, would clearly be less evil, and the Registrar General might be an appropriate person to administer it. But I would still be against. (And I am also uncomfortable with the registration of births, marriages and deaths, BTW.)
Would you object if the scheme embodied all the protections outlined in my above link?
Yes; but your scheme of protections is well-thought-out and about the least objectionable version of a national ID scheme. Whereas the Home Office version is about the worst possible.
Would you object if it really only only cost on average say £5 per registered person per year to run the registration (including fair amortisation of capital costs), and every business that used it had to pay a fair and realistic charge for the use?
Yes. Cost is irrelevant unless my fundamental objections on grounds of social liberty, and my allied fundamental preference for non-exclusive identification. Were I convinced that the system was only doing things that the state ought to be permitted to do, in ways that it ought to be permitted to do them, then we could have a discussion about cost-effectiveness.
Shaun,
And now you want to add in most every other activity a citizen is involved in into a central National Database via a National ID card ?
Nigel doesn’t, to be fair. He has strong reasoned objections to the database-of-everything approach. He just doesn’t see anything wrong with centralised authentication of personal identity and a single index one-to-one and onto the human population of Britain.
Mr Blair on the other hand does want all your doings logged and collated across government:
http://www.number10.gov.uk/output/Page9451.asp
Guy,
The reality of computing (and Government) has always been, and will continue to be, to assemble very small databases into larger databases. The logical progression is to assemble all databases into a single database.
Therefore from a logical point of view Nigel supports a single and complete database for ALL citizens. This he has tried to argue in a round-about fashion, as you have demonstrated where he tries to make the scheme palitable.
Just a wild thought. If the NHS patient database is to be of any use to medical staff, surely the first thing it must do is to provide for a reliable and positive identification of every individual presenting for treatment, whether conscious or not at the time. If it can’t reliably do the ID thing, then dependence on it would result in mix-ups of blood groups, allergies, addictions and medical histories, etc, with potentially lethal consequencies.
So, assuming that the NHS system can be made to work at an affordable price (perhaps a big assumption) why not wait for this to happen and then consider whether it’s worth bolting on supplementary personal data (effectively an extended ID as fields of pseudo medical data). Convoluting medical and criminal data is not altogether a new idea — Samual Butler originally made the suggestiion.
Guy wrote: Why more checks? This was with respect to a checking of passport applications for those who have not registered with the National Identity Scheme (NIdS). This is in a world in which NIdS registration is optional and in no way linked to passport issue.
More checks being required is on the assumption that passport issue requires greater confidence of identity than currently prevailling.
Such greater confidence could come from, say, a check against the National Identity Register (NIR). This could be for existence of the person of given name, date of birth and address. It could also include some small help from a check of the photograph against that on the NIR. Should personal attendance at a passport office be required, then a biometric check against the NIR or presented ID card could also be made.
Without such realively easy checks against the NIR, the passport issuing authority might reasonably choose to make checks of their own. These could be less stringent than for registeration with the NIdS. However, they could also be substantially equivalent, involving repetition of all the work for NIdS registration. Such checks would be more appropriate on issue of a first passport, rather than on renewal.
In the circumstances of extra work to handle a passport application, a fair extra charge seems fair itself, for the amount of extra work typically involved (on a standard scale of charges).
Best regards
Guy wrote: Nigel … He just doesn’t see anything wrong with centralised authentication of personal identity and a single index one-to-one and onto the human population of Britain.
[First Guy, thank you for the clarification of my view and the support for my sincerity, if not my case.]
Concerning not seeing anything wrong, that is (I think) something of an overstatement. I am very much against over-zealous bureaucracy; this is something we serious do need protection against. I am also very much against government doing unnecessary (or impossible) things, and especially spending my tax money on it.
I do, however, see nothing wrong in assigning (hopefully) unique reference numbers to people. This is a matter of administrative efficiency; it’s as useful for good things (eg not mixing up people on the Criminal Records Bureau database) as bad (the odd bit of genocide). Given that the probability of occurrence of good things is vastly greater than of bad, I think it’s OK on balance. But anyone with figures to the contrary, please post them.
The issue for me is not nothing wrong. It is a matter of balance of benefit, especially in the modern world. This is allowing for the risks of all downsides, with those mitigated as best we can, by law and by normal procedures.
Finally (and somewhat answering one of Shaun’s points), I am very much against unnecessary invasion of personal privacy. Every piece of data stored in a government database should earn its keep, in terms of providing benefit from its acquisition, storage and use: benefit declared in advance and with use strictly limited to that purpose. Also, access to every single piece of data should be restricted to those government officials who have legitimate need to access it (though that might include the police across databases in the event of “probable cause”, as they say in the USA, that a crime has been committed). Thus I am not in any way for a single database (physical or logical) with unfettered access across government.
I also believe that what anyone seeks, or seeks to oppose, is more important than their motivation (which is usually difficult to judge with certainty). So I’d prefer not to have to go further into my personal justification for my views, just the arguments in their favour.
Best regards
Perhaps I should have written “nothing intrinsically wrong”. Sorry if I have in any way misrepresented you, Nigel.
I think we share the desire to preserve privacy. But when I balance the merits of adminstrative efficiency against its dangers, I think I’d rather have inefficiency and the possibility of somewhere to hide. I remain unconvinced that having unique reference numbers for individuals would create significant value for good, even if we could guarantee they’d never be abused.
Freeman, one of the (many, many, many) reasons I oppose the very existance of the NHS is it is so easy to use it as the thin end of the wedge for SO many intrusive and repressive measures via the logic that as ‘we’ have to pay for everyone’s medical treatment, ‘we’ have the right to regulate this or that behaviour which might cause the NHS to be involved.
Using it for the justification for ID cards and data pooling is just the latest reason to loath the NHS.
Nigel Sedgwick: “I do, however, see nothing wrong in assigning (hopefully) unique reference numbers to people. This is a matter of administrative efficiency..”
Wasn’t the National Insurance number supposed to be Unique? Now you can, I’m told, get one on the black market for a fee.
Nigel Sedgwick: “Also, access to every single piece of data should be restricted to those government officials who have legitimate need to access it ..”
If we were arguing in a vacum, where government is a brand new idea, never before thought of, if we didn’t know the nature of this thing ‘government’. Then your point might be reasonable.
But wearen’t, it’s not, we do, it isn’t.
Errrr we are barcoded at birth. It’s called a “fingerprint”. And that’s the overt barcode. The internal barcode is DNA.
This has always been my major knock against universal ID cards: not only that the system is intrusive (which of course it is), but that the ability of the State to screw it up to the individual’s disadvantage is limitless.
Look: great big huge corporations, who can afford to pay the best and the brightest, still screw up their database operations. And they can be held accountable for such screwups by both government and shareholders.
Government, who generally get the second (or worst) choice at quality employees, are accountable to nobody.
And I’m not operating under the precautionary principle, here. It’s not that the State might ruin someone’s life through their ineptitude. It’s that there’s already abundant evidence that they are already doing so, even with the tiny and rudimentary capabilities at their disposal.
Simple example: police raid a house to deal with a drug dealer. Householder thinks they’re bad guys, shoots a cop, gets tried and convicted for murder.
So why is this an example of a screwup?
The cops raided the wrong address.
Oops.
But the “oops”means that an innocent man is going to die, simply because the cops misread a damn street number.
Now multiply that occurrence exponentially, to get some kind of idea of the future under a universal ID system.
Because it’s not IF the State will screw up a person’s life through an error, it’s WHEN and HOW OFTEN.
As far as I can understand their arguments, APL and Kim seem to be arguing that imperfect systems are not allowed, no system is perfect, therefore no system is allowed.
Best regards
Perry de Havilland — I don’t think we are a million miles apart on ID cards or the NHS — which is why I belong to BUPA. But having lived and worked abroad it is clear that even private medicine in the UK is not completely independent of the NHS; eg NHS GPs are used by the private insurance companies as gatekeepers for access to private hospitals. And the NHS must be one of the rare employers which allows its senior staff (Consultants) to use its premises and equipment for their private work and even permits/encourages them to take away its customers!
But, coming back to my initial point, if the NHS database is to work effectively it needs to have an ID function. So why do we have to have another ID system imposed on us? Once an individual’s ID has been established “authority” can on those occasions necessary separately look up his possible criminal background on the PNC system.
I’m curious. Why are you guys worried by government databases, but not those run by banks?
Banks have linked databases with millions of personal records.
They issue biometric ID cards (signatures are biometrics) that you need for access to your own money. (They *claim* this is to stop fraud, but of course it doesn’t.)
They’ll give your records to officialdom on request, and often also to unofficialdom like private investigators, bailliffs, reporters, and other mischief-makers.
They know what you earn, what you spend, when, where, who with, and often on what.
They have total control over it, able to freeze or alter your account at will.
They are anonymous, unaccountable, unelected, and fully paid up members of the corporate ‘big business’ Establisment.
Their systems are known to be insecure, with millions vanishing in fraud. They’re also sometimes wrong, with truly inconvenient consequences.
About the only thing to be said for them is that they’re not quite compulsory – it is still possible to live without a bank account. Assuming none of you are paying your ISPs cash-in-hand, I don’t expect that’s many of you.
So tell me, what’s the difference? Why, of all the people with power over your lives, is government singled out for such mistrust?
And given that, isn’t that the last place the enemies of liberty would want to operate from?
Just now heard this wonderful nugget on the news here in the US. An employee of the Veterans Administration had the personal records of 28 million military veterans stolen from his home.
No, of course s/he did not have permission to take them home. The report said the thieves probably don’t know they have the records so I presume they are on a laptop that was stolen. Or some other portable media.
I wouldn’t have given this much more than a ‘here we go again’ shrug if it weren’t for some of the trusting people commenting here with such faith in government.
And Annoyed, I can change banks. Governments frown on that sort treatment.
Simple really…beacuse I cannot be forced to do business with a bank if I do not like their terms and conditions. Governments are rather harder to avoid if you decide you do not want their ‘services’.
Annoyed, this one seems so obvious. Only the government gets to use guns and force and prisons. What ‘enemy of liberty’ would pass up that?
Governments insist on exclusivity; banks don’t and can’t.
Guy and Perry – exactly!, which is why I see entities like banks as a good starting point for providing ID certification services…in fact they are more than half way there, and using the exsiting Credit Card clearing mechanism might also be worthwhile, as ID checks would not exeed card transactions IMHO.
Good point.
Should you ever find yourself on a credit blacklist or have your assets frozen, just try changing banks. Should your bank use your details to send you junk mail, try to find another bank that won’t. Should you not like this new ChipNPin ID card they’ve sent you, find another bank that doesn’t use cards, and never will. Try to find a bank that doesn’t expect to know what you earn, or what you spend, or where you live.
Granted you cannot take over the nation with control of only a single bank, but banks are now part of a bigger system. Like political parties, they all look much the same.
You’re arguing that it doesn’t matter that you’ve lost the liberty, because you can always get it back if there’s a problem (or rather, give up your liberty to someone else who won’t cause you that same problem). That tells me it isn’t the liberty that matters to you, but the current absence of problems.
As for guns and force and prison – violence is truly the last refuge of the incompetent. Violence is easy, weapons are freely obtainable if you’re smart enough to see them, and the Members of Parliament are waaaay outnumbered. The police and prisons only work because they move against individuals while the rest conform, and only for as long as the police choose to obey too. Do you really think they can arrest everybody? Shoot everybody? It’s not impossible, with enough help, to shoot enough, but it’s personally dangerous and cripples the economy, and only a fool would use it if there was a survivable alternative. Such force is rarely necessary anyway. Usually the people accept and support illiberal regimes because they know there is a wasteland of suffering between oppression and freedom that they fear to cross.
Whether a society is or isn’t free is not a feature simply of the people at the top, it is woven into the structure of society from top to bottom. In seeking freedom it is not the particular rulers you need to change, but this structure. The technology the government is proposing for ID cards was invented by banks. Thanks to banks, we are now an identity-based society, and it is precisely because we voluntarily accepted its benefits that the government can justify doing this to us. It is also why most people in this country will accept it.
A dictatorship is not a system where one man commands, it is a system where everybody else obeys.
(In my opinion anyway. Feel free to disagree. My curiosity is satisfied.)
You’ve obviously never dealt with a private bank. Some banks still remember they have to compete for your custom.
The others are a cartel of compliance merchants, but all of them can be negotiated with where they can’t hide behind government edict.
You are quite right about the societal cringe before authority being a chief enemy of practical freedom. It’s worse here than in the States (and I suspect, Australia, France, Italy), but lesser than it is in the East.
Blacklisting has to be done by the governments rules. Freezing assets has to be done by the government itself.
That “bigger system” banks are a part of is called ‘government’. The Fed. FDIC. etc.
The day I get a chip/pin id, it goes in the shredder and that account gets closed.
The bank I do business with is the same as my father and grandparents. When I phone in, the receptionist calls me by name before I even introduce myself.
You don’t have to tell a bank what you earn unless you are borrowing from them. If you are going to borrow enough money to buy a house you sure shootin’ better expect to give them so personal information. You’re borrowing from strangers. That money is being managed for its owners, mostly the Chinese and Japanese banking systems.
You liberty argument is nuts. Except where the government is intruding its heavy boots, I don’t have to tell banks anything and they may not do anythying to me.
“violence is truly the last refuge of the incompetent.” And your point is?
“The police and prisons only work because they move against individuals while the rest conform,” You are beginning to understand the system. From here on down, your observations are pretty good.
But I ask you, why do you think it’s just the “rulers” we want to change? With the exception of a few hidious compromises (ie slavery), I would like to see us change back to the original principles those guys in 1787 worked out.
“A dictatorship is not a system where one man commands, it is a system where everybody else obeys.” You really do make some good observations. Why not hang around and share some more of them?
BTW Pa, that last sentence was serious, not sarcastic.
Nigel,
It’s not a question of the perfect [system] being the enemy of the good.
It’s a question that the imperfect system, in the hands of an overbearing, blundering government, is far worse than no system at all.
When it comes to the Gummint, I have little patience for error — simply because the Gummint does not allow us any error whatsoever.
Try filling in the incorrect birthdate on any government document, and the penalty is the same whether you did it by mistake or on purpose.
Worse still, if the Gummint screws up, the most I can expect is a “so sorry”, with no compensation. If I screw up, I can go to jail, be fined, or be at the mercy of all those other many penalties with which the Gummint uses to cow me into being a “perfect” citizen.
Midwesterner,
Your evidence of suspicion of the banks is more than enough to satisfy me. I only queried it because having lurked here for a while, I noticed the majority of criticism was directed at government, when it seems to me that the more seductive institutions posed more interesting questions.
When I was talking about the bank knowing what you earn, I was thinking of them seeing your paycheck go in. I suppose you could have multiple accounts and arrange some obfuscatory transfers, but I imagine that would only provoke them into comparing notes to find out whether money laundering or fraud was going on. Not that the particular example of banks matters all that much.
What I was really talking about was all the liberties and privacies we give up voluntarily because it is in our interests to do so, rather than the ones we are compelled and coerced into. Having given them up for our own benefit, it is hard then to snatch them back in cases where someone else has the advantage.
It is the old principle of catching more flies with honey than vinegar. Force is inefficient – you tie up half your workforce in guarding the other half, the ones you force don’t cooperate any more than they have to, and everybody wants to kill you. You can do it to a small number without too much cost, but eventually your prisons fill up, you have to compensate for the low probability of catching them with extra brutality for those you do, and it all gets very expensive. That places a hard limit on what you can get away with. On the other hand, if you can make people want to give up their liberties, you can control a large majority of the population with virtually no security, and you’ll be applauded by them for it. There are no limits then.
Considering their effectiveness at eroding liberties, the popular schemes are a more serious threat than the ones they have to force on you. From that point of view, having the government monopoly on force is not as powerful as being in a position to make people’s lives more convenient. A few mavericks might keep out of the system out of principle, but they’ll be few enough to deal with by other means.
An enforced ID database could never be universal, government inefficiency will see to that. Can you imagine the cost of chasing millions of defaulters? Can you imagine the Home Office catching them all? But when society at large finds ways to use the card to bring actual benefits to each and every citizen, oh, but then the government’s database will fill right up!
It’s getting very difficult to disagree with you.
Great phrase.
Re banks and paychecks. I have to adjust my perspective. If you’re outside the US it will of course be different for you. I’ve been self employed for over twenty years. I’ll see what I can recall. The bank will only know your take home. They won’t know your fed or state withholding, health ins withholding, pension withholding, or what else? All the same, point taken. But you can, like I did twenty + years ago, cash your check manually at the issuing bank. My employer had a private subcontractor confidentially process payroll and I doubt their bank tracked any more than account number, check number, day and amount. All the same, they can put together a pretty good dossier on someone if they choose to. A lot depends on what business practices they use.
Here is some of my reasoning and why I tilt at the windmills I do.
As long as we preserve the right to be different, even if being different is difficult to do, we preserve the possibility that those who won’t trade privacy and liberty for comfort and convenience will carry on and prosper. If enough of them do, they may shift the goal posts of what society is willing to accept.
Force is inefficient. But it is force. And you are right; at a certain threshold, it becomes untenable to the population. But some seriously huge populations have been held under control with nothing but force. They didn’t even need the honey. Just some empty early promises. (Stalin, Mao, etc.) And in countless countries using government fiat to grant power of force to select parts of the population, brutal suppressions and genocide have been the norm. All because government has a monopoly on the use and delegation of force.
Something to keep in mind are that laws are also force. Just because the gun doesn’t get drawn and the cuffs locked doesn’t mean that the threat isn’t there. Attacking inappropriate government overreaches is in fact directly attacking the muscle branch of those who are using government for their own ends. It sounds like you focus more on the marketing branch of those same usurpers.
About ID cards. Imagine an enthusiastically and inflexibly enforced system replete with stunning incompetence and the fraud undetected and unprosecuted. A system like that certainly will fill right up with a grand daisy chain of people all thinking they are screwing the next guy.
Force in the control of society is like the rook in chess. Not terribly useful until the end game. Then absolutely deadly.
Anyway, stop lurking and start opinionating. I don’t recall too many commenters here who focus much on complacent collusion with the slide into a totalitarian mindset and ultimately, state. (‘cept maybe Paul. He doesn’t seem to miss anything.) When colluders turn up here, they are generally throughly excoriated and disappear fairly quickly. But as a general pattern, most of us focus on government actions. For me at least, your opinions would add an interesting dimension.