My sparser (even) than usual blogging lately is largely the result of the expanding demands of NO2ID. Thank you to everyone (including several Samizdata contributors) who has added to the avalanche of cheques into our legal fund. The bank clerks in Marylebone High Street are grateful for the work, too.
We (NO2ID) are about to make things even more fun by recruiting a new cohort of refuseniks to join those 10,000 immortals who committed themselves in 2005. In the aftermath of the HMRC data-sharing scandal, the British public is ready for the message that the only way to stop the state from debauching your personal information is not to give it a chance.
When Nick Clegg and Chris Huhne vowed to defy the ID scheme recently, it quickly became clear that not many people really understood what this meant. We have formulated a nice clear promise that anyone at all can make, and set it free, online and off. It will be an interesting exercise in network effects.
What follows is a piece I wrote for public distribution explaining the point of the whole thing:
You might be prepared to go to gaol rather than have an ID card. But you can’t.
David Blunkett has been smugly pronouncing that there will be no ID card martyrs because the intent is to have a system of penalties – like monstrous parking fines – hard to contest in court. So further punishments would relate to failure to pay, not ID cards. That silly distinction is currently irrelevant, since powers of direct compulsion have been dropped, for now. It has not stopped Mr Blunkett repeating it, though.
Subtler minds have been at work. The Home Office plans to make you to “volunteer”. It hopes almost all the population will “volunteer”, before most people have even noticed what is happening. Well before it rounds-up and force-fingerprints a few pariahs. Official documents will one by one be “designated”, so that you cannot get one without at the same time asking to be placed – for life – on the National Identity Register.
The civil servant, Sylvanus Vivian who originated this idea in 1934 – yes, that’s right, nineteen thirty-four – called it “parasitic vitality”. In other words, the scheme is a vampire. It has no life of its own, and thrives only if it feeds. There is its weakness. We, collectively, can choose to starve the Identity and Passport Service. It only works smoothly if few are prepared to face a little inconvenience to resist. It only works at all if a large majority of the population can be hypnotised into thinking that it is just routine, no big deal. If enough of us refuse to be bled willingly, the beast will either starve or show its fangs.
Already ‘e-Passports’ have been used as a pretext to build a chain of interrogation centres to service the ID scheme. But further growth of the parasite will be harder to hide. Which is where you come in.
Making martyrdom hard, made resistance easy too. Actually breaking the law at this stage is hard to do. There is scarcely any ID card law to break; it is designed to be brought in silently by regulations, alongside administrative changes.
So that’s why NO2ID is suggesting a new form of non-violent direct action: pre-emptive resistance. You can do something positive now. Something totally legal; that has its own life, not determined by us, but by you. Anyone can do it. Anyone can help others do it. The more who do, the easier it is.
You can resolve openly, and clearly, not to do those specific things that give the ID scheme its “parasitic vitality”:
I solemnly and publicly promise that:
- I shall not register for a national identity card
- I shall not supply personal details or fingerprints to a National Identity Register
- I shall not apply for any document or service if joining the National Identity Register is a condition of obtaining it
- I shall not co-operate with any Identity and Passport Service interview concerning my identity.
- I also promise by my example to encourage others to do the same.
In just one month of 2005, over 10,000 people pledged online not to register. Many more will take this NO2ID Pledge, and pass it on to others. Maybe the Government thinks it could force tens of thousands to submit by denying them access to their own lives. It would be a very brave Government that tried.
Interesting piece, however if for public distribution I would note that “I solemly ” should be “I solemnly”
Thanks. Fixed. It is properly spelt on the certificates we are distributing.
Do I have to be solemn when I promise? Can I not promise joyfully, or even with a smirk?
A question? Is it legal for a UK national to enter the UK using a foreign passport?
Michael, I believe so. I know for a fact that I have, and my brothers have too. Last time I did was a while ago, in 2000. If I remember correctly, I showed them my US passport and told them I was a dual-national. Filled out a little form with my address on it and that was that.
I may well do it again next summer when I come back to visit the UK. Depends which line looks quickest 🙂
Yes.
Although legally a British Citizen does not require a passport to enter or leave Britain at all. The Home Office has been working for years to make it next to impossible in practice, however. Most people think that the cant terminology of “travel authorisation” actually means what it says, and you need HM Government’s approval to travel. Not yet you don’t.
I’ve been trying to find out about this apparent lack of a requirement for a passport for ages without success. What is the basis of it?
Common law, which still takes the proper view that a British passport is claim to the protection of the Crown while abroad.
Further, EU Law provides no EEA national requires a passport to enter any member state, which presumably includes British people entering Britain. And one can (for the moment) as a British or Irish citizen travel freely between Britain and Ireland without any kind of documentation or permission.
My question about the issue Michael raises (states deciding they have exclusive control over their citizens in transit at point of departure from somewhere else), is what happens if you have dual nationality of two such states and attempt to travel between them. For example how do American-South Africans cope. Do they stop over in London in order to change the passport on which they are travelling?
The idiocy arises because the Cartel of Nations (no longer a consort) has collectively in a few years moved to the position that used only to be held by totalitarian states, viz that passports constitute travel permission from your owner.
How does that work? When you get cited for “failure to tell some bureaucrat your mother’s maiden name,” isn’t there a court date already assigned?
What I mean is, when I paper someone, the citation is a summons for him to appear in the city or county court to answer to a charge of whatever. Some violations (minor traffic stuff, mostly) allow a guilty plea by mail, payment of a fine and acceptance of points on one’s driver’s license, without an in-person appearance.
However, the presumption is that the recipient of the summons will appear before Judge X to enter a not-guilty plea and demand a trial date. At least in my state, anyway. There are others that require some sort of appearance bond beyond a simple signature in the ‘Without admitting guilt, I promise to appear at the time and place required above.”[1]
But either way, there’s still a date with a judge already set.
Were I a UK citizen I’d take the pledge too. In a way, we’ve already gone down that road here: see the guy who got prosecuted for smoking a Cuban cigar while in England, in violation of the US embargo. (And the Department of the Treasury has claimed the power to prosecute US residents who are citizens of other countries, and not just US citizens. Fascist assholes.)
[1] Illinois seizes driver’s licenses as a bond, for instance. Idaho will arrest out-of-state truckers and force a cash bond be posted, to secure appearance on overweight violations.
Sunfish,
I refer you to the Identity Cards Act 2006, ss31-34
Administrative penalties are intended to be imposed by the Home Office on its own determination. Objections may be met, if the Secretary of State (or his designee) disagrees with the objection, he may choose to raise the penalty, and that might be made a standard part of the procedure. You might then appeal to a court, however the onus would be on you to make the case that you were not liable to the penalty, and the court may only re-hear the decision, i.e. consider whether the Secretary of State’s decision was correct according to the Secretary of State’s own rules.
The courts might well consider that they had some ancilliary jurisdiction based on natural justice or some constitutional or human-rights-convention principle were anyone well funded enough to drive such a case all the way to the appeal courts. But it is designed to be impossibly expensive to contest.
Where do I sign up for my NO2ID identification card?
People fear the anonymous and historically have turned to the state to protect them from others they can’t identify and trust.
The best long term strategy for short circuiting the drive for universal State ID would be to create a private decentralized ID system. Such a system would restore and maintain civil trust without creating the dangerous information asymmetry inherent in a State ID system.
When fighting the engorgement of the state I think it important to show people that private mechanism can solve the same problems as state power. If people begin to see anonymity as a prime factor in crime and terrorism (which arguably it is) then no amount of libertarian argumentation will forestall State IDs unless libertarians can offer a better alternative than mere forbearance of the evil.
Just something to think about in terms of long term strategy.
I presume based on some sort of trusted third party But who to trust when the only companies big enough to tackle such a venture are already in bed with the state?
We have the same problem here, with all “big government conservative” Republican candidates, — that is, all of them except for Ron Paul — supporting the “Real ID” program.
Fight the good fight.