You should see an ID card like a passport in-country.
– Meg Hillier MP, the minister responsible for the scheme, to the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee, today.
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Samizdata quote of the dayGuy Herbert (London) · Civil liberty, Law & Regulation · Privacy & Panopticon · Slogans & Quotations · UK affairs February 26th, 2008 |
 62 comments to Samizdata quote of the day |
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Do these people have any idea of what they are saying? Like, for instance, the history of the use of internal passports within other countries? The lack of awareness is truly truly extraordinary.
Un-fucking-believable. Time to start stockpiling glass bottles, washing up liquid and gasoline. Not joking.
Of course they do. These people are pathological control freaks.
What makes you think they do not know? They are profoundly totalitarian to their core in that they want to control every aspect of everyone’s lives.
Would that be as a permit to travel (and even to exist), or would it be as a firm though polite request for all government and others that it may concern “to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hinderance and to afford the bearer such assistance and protection as may be necessary”?
Best regards
I wonder if this soft bitch realises that that is exactly how we do see them? She is so stupid that she does not realise that she has just admitted that the ID card will be like the old South African pass books. And the thick bint thinks this is a selling feature of the whole slave card scam? Ten years into the Projekt I had begun to think there was nothing a NuLabor clone could say to surprise me any more, but I have to give this dog a biscuit.
Wow. I mean… wow. When I was growing up this is one of the things that separated the Soviet Union from the free world. They had internal passports and we didn’t.
I’m not sure about the near-term practical effects, but the symbolism is too stark to ignore. No wonder so many people are leaving.
John K: Well said.
Like, for instance, the history of the use of internal passports within other countries?
I believe that until 1911 you could travel anywhere in Europe except the Russian Empire without a passport, internal or external. Now that’s what I call globalisation.
I’ll post Hansard Committee proceedings as soon as it is up, so that you can check my informant is accurate.
South Africans will be nostalgically excited about the reintroduction of the dompas.
I am sure all the Eastern Europeans will be delighted, too.
Once you’ve verified that the information is correct, Guy, I suggest everyone contact Meg at:
hillierm@parliament.uk
and encourage like-minded people to do the same.
Are we to see the creation of bantustans in the UK?
“Ausweise, bitte!”
All we really need to complete the travesty is ‘random ID checks’, which would never occur in a free nation such as the UK and…and…
Never mind.
You have to bear in mind that these people really are very ignorant in the most straightforward sense of the word. They know little beyond that which is need to succeed within the(ir) political system; a general understanding of e.g. history, politics, economics (let alone science and technology, or mathematics) is far beyond them.
They believe the things they do not only because they know so little, but have actively avoided learning any more. They blunder blindly on, attempting to fit the ugly feet of their beliefs into the glass slippers of reality.
DocBud,
Emailing junior ministers is rarely particularly useful; and I’d generally deprecate mass-write-in campaigns. This will not pass unmarked, however.
Eric,
We have them already (Link). Which is popular: see the outpouring of venom against foreigners (dressed up as hatred of business, and concern for workers’ rights) from caring, sharing Guardian readers here(Link).
Never underestimate the attraction of dog-in-the-manger economics, where people will willingly make their own lives worse in order to punish others.
I do see it that way. It’s just like the old Soviet internal passports. The United States is moving that way, and I loathe the prospect. I hope you guys over in the UK can stifle this scheme.
Don’t these witless drones understand that they’re enslaving their own grandchildren?
Rebellion! Raise up the name of Kett and march on London!
You should see an ID card like a passport in-country.
If you tolerate this, 10 years from now a cloned replacement might one day chime:
You should see mandatory curfew like bonus family time.
Oh now, be fair. The USSR had other symbols of totalitarianism too, like a Ministry of Culture, for example.
Perry: They have totalitarian instincts, and a political/party culture that reinforces that.
But that doesn’t suggest that they’re not also deeply ignorant about history, say of the Soviet Union’s internal structure, or that of Hitlerist* Germany.
I find it eminently plausible that the speaker has literally no idea of the history of internal passports.
Her ignorance is, in a way, revealing in itself.
(* Why “Hitlerist”? Because it was “Hitlerism”, not “Fascism” at the time, and “Fascist” has become a mere term of abuse in most use, and because for all its manifold evils and faults, Franco’s Fascist Spain simply wasn’t Hitlerist. Even Mussolini didn’t manage it.)
“Papers, Let me see your Papers sir…..”
Scary. We here on this side of the pond are struggling with the “REAL ID Act” which is essentially a federal ID. They are claiming that once this is implemented you won’t be able to board a plane or enter a federal building without one, or at least an equivalent federal ID which would be your passport.
Fortunately, the federalist nature that ties our nation together has allowed for somewhat of a citizens revolt against the REAL ID Act by forcing state legislatures to write legislation that states unequivocally that our particular state WILL NOT be complying with the Federal REAL ID act.
There is a map detailing the current status of each states legislation against this form of tyranny-
Anti-Real ID Legislation in the States
Is there a similar means of legally protesting in the UK?
Not really. We have a precedent here that we ignore things like our Bill Of Rights (yes we have one, 1689) until it goes away. Everyone blathers on about Magna Carta while ignoring the fact that virtually the whole fecking thing has long ago been repealed.
The thick bint thinks this is a selling point, saysbbb Perry
For an immigrant an internal passport is a selling point.
If I go away from my home town I feel relaxed anywhere in UK.
An Asian or a Pole who only knows one town and fears discimination elsewhere may welcome an ID card.
His internal passport that gives him the right to be anywhere.
Ms Hillier is not ignorant of how it will be used, but she knows her audience is.
Evidence and arguement aginst this proposal will be required along with ridicule and outrage.
Another tosser who has never had a day job
“ugly feet of their beliefs into the glass slippers of reality.”
Wonderful, Ian B, wonderful.
Thank you.
I am sick of this: yet another twist of the knife in we, the people of this nation.
But this is not outrage against the government or NuLab or Broon or any of them. This is outrage against every one of you out there who ever voted for Labour at any point in the past eleven years.
That’s right: some of you here thought it was better, so you voted for them. Some of the people reading this blog imagined in some twisted way that having even a psuedo-socialist party in power was going to work out well.
And now, thanks to everyone who voted Labour, we are stuck with them. They keep on keeping on, battering us all. Chipping away until they win, for yes… they WILL win. They have the weight of power on their side, they have the whole shooting match stitched up. They will play the long game and outlast your supposed ideals.
Internal passports? Yeah, why not? What the fuck does it matter now? It’s just another step along the way to full control and another turn of the state machinery cogs.
It was always all going to end in tears and so if you put that little X in the red box, it’s your fault. Got it?
Oh we will see the usual intellectually superior arguments here no doubt about the “need for change” in ’97 and other platitudes. Whines that you never thought it would go this way. Fuck that. I voted labour some thirty years ago and regretted it at once, and vowed never to have this bunch of wankers in ever again.
But if you voted, even once, for these bastards since ’96 you did this. Enjoy the closing acts of freedom my friends and console yourselves you are better than them. But your vote did it, and they will not go away because there is an army of them crawling out of the sewers now.
One problem with ID cards is that some people could forget to carry them. Another is that one person may use another’s card.
Perhaps it should be suggested to Meg Hillier that a National ID Number be tattoed on each person at the age of 5 years. This is a surely a creative and cheap solution. The technical problems have been worked out elsewhere at an earlier time.
[Does this suggestion break Godwin’s Law?]
The third and larger problem is one that we here in the office call “job security”, namely ID Theft (disclaimer- I work for Kroll in our ID theft Fraud solutions dept.). ID Cards are just another tool for thieves to use to impersonate you and ruin your credit history, your medical history, or even more seriously create a false arrest record in your name. And with each new ID comes another database that is a goldmine for ID thieves to plunder.
Bruce Schneier, an internationally renowned security technologist, has written extensively on the problems with national ID programs. For those interested, he discussed the weaknesses and fallacies of a national ID program here.
…where is Brown getting these people?
It’s almost as if they are deliberately selecting for stupidity to make it less likely the leadership will be threatened.
MDC,
No that is the authentic voice of a junior Labour party Islington fuckwit. Their sense of superiority knows no bounds,this the way they talk to each other a dinner parties.
Hanging them from lamp posts becomes legal if you hang enough of them.
The trick is figuring out when it is lamp post time. If you start too early the consequence may be grave … almost as grave as starting too late.
The Fatal Conceit strikes again.
Evil, real evil.
No doubt before 2010 there’ll be a fully fledged act of enablement. No need for an election then and the new labour project will be complete.
Well, the evidence suggests(Link) that Britons are rather fond of their passports, so perhaps she is just playing to her audience.
They’d better hurry up, else there will be no one left to identify.
No doubt before 2010 there’ll be a fully fledged act of enablement.
It is called the Lisbon Treaty.
We have government policy set out in five and ten year plans, and these are unaffected by the results of any elections.
So which of us are going to get the multiple unlimited passports allowing free travel and residence throughout the UK, and which of us are going to get the prole version that gets you banned from travelling to London?
And am I allowed to prevent undocumented hoodies and immigrant looking folk walking down my street? No?
Sorry, but they aren’t stupid, they are up to mischief. If I was up to mischief too, I would probaly support this.
Sometimes you have to think to yourself, “what would I do if I was a crook?”.
No, CountingCats, it’s called the European Communities Act, and it’s been on the books for 35 years.
The genius of the post-modernist “liberal” fascists who now constitute the political class in every major European country was to bide their time. They understood the advantage (to them) of dropping us all into a vat of cold water and turning up the heat gradually. By the time those of us who are paying attention wonder whether our skin should really be blistering like that, the majority doesn’t know any better. Including the useful idiots in the class’s own ranks, like Hillier here.
TMan: The closest we get is Alec Salmond saying that an ID card won’t be required by the Scottish “Government”. But since much of the database will be derived from the DWP’s existing (social security, entitlements and employment) records, and that will be one of the primary initial uses of the card, this counts for pretty much nothing. The DWP is a national (think “federal”) department. The best we can hope for is that we’re spared this internal passport for travel within Scotland. But if you have relatives or business in England, Wales, or Northern Ireland (as most Britons do), that’s not a vast consolation.
We here in the Antipodes don’t yet need an internal passport, but I wonder if we’ll catch this dsiease? Our government is very big on symbolic gestures (Kyoto, the ‘Sorry’ day,etc.) but small on major changes to the policies of the previous government. In fact, there is no discussion at all about internal passports.
Best of all, I could always move to The Principality of Hutt River Province! As it keeps saying on their website, people ask if it’s a valid act of secession, and they reply, “We are still here!”
Yeah, in Oz we have had a fairly rational government for the last ten years, and I think the new one will be pretty sane as well. They have pandered to the loopies in a few symbolic ways, chief amongst them making Peter Garrett the environment minister, but even there they stripped him of any ability to do serious damage.
Seems there was an attempt to impose an ID card sometime last decade, I was out of the country and don’t know the details, but it was shot down. Can’t see it happening here any time soon.
Although there is no formal federal ID in the US, there is a de-facto one, which is the Social Security card/number. That, and state driving license, are two documents without which, in my experience, one cannot function normally in the US.
Yeah and they said all the same things about New Liebour back in ’97. I remember it well… safe pair of hands, continuing existing policies, not repeating the mistakes of past Labour administrations. Look where that has got the UK after ten years of the devious crooks.
Australians shouldn’t feel smug…. Rudd will take the same path. Lefties always do, its their natural behaviour.
Seems there was an attempt to impose an ID card sometime last decade, I was out of the country and don’t know the details, but it was shot down.
Not exactly. There were about three attempts under Howard. Hard to say exactly how many because each time the scheme was repudiated it came back under a different name with a different excuse – which is the sort of thing advocates of ID schemes complain about when people do it. One of Rudd’s first acts was to kill it off.
joe,
I don’t know enough about Rudd, but Howard was as authoritarian as they come and I’m glad he’s off the international scene.
Liberty is multi-dimensional. The massively nationalising, wholly socialist, Ernie Bevin didn’t try to stop his opponents from speaking, and as Foreign Secretary enunciated a doctrine as libertarian as any:
“My policy is to be able to take a ticket at Victoria station and go anywhere I damn well please!”
The closed and monitored world travel of the 21st century is the product of soi-disant modernisers and pretended supporters of globalisation.
Word.
Riddle me this: WHY THE HELL DO I NEED MY SSN TO RENEW MY HUNTING LICENSE??? I mean, when I buy a gun through a dealer and fill out the BATFE form 4473 I don’t need to put down a SSN.
In Colorado, it’s required. Division of Wildlife says that it’s to prevent men delinquent in child-support payments from getting hunting or fishing licenses. Except that there’s already a method of enforcing a child support order: it’s called a judge telling the sheriff to seize the deadbeat’s assets and auction them. Just like we’ve been doing for any other deadbeat for over a century without needing a number.
I actually had a guy at a video-rental store tell me that they needed my SSN. When I asked why, he gave a long and barely-coherent explanation that was split between their computer won’t open a file for me without it, and the USA PATRIOT act requires it.
“Because illegal aliens send “Police Academy” DVD’s to Mexico rather than returning them?”
For what it’s worth, the DC apologists will tell you that the DL is not a “federal” ID because it comes from the several states. Which, when REAL ID becomes law, is, um, incorrect.
Yeah and they said all the same things about New Liebour back in ’97
No, back in ’97, living in the UK, I had conversations with people in which I anticipated significant restrictions in civil rights by the new government, based on the language they were using. I don’t like the politics of the new government in Oz, but I am not getting the same vibes I got back then.
The real whackos are being sidelined. Garrett has been emasculated, the Minister for the Environment has had all authority over global warming stripped away, this being the area he was most desperate to get control off, and Julia Gillard, Deputy PM and a real head case, has been given so much authority, and so many portfolios, that it is clear she has been set up to fail.
Lord I hope so. That whining voice makes my teeth itch.
back in ’97, living in the UK, I had conversations with people in which I anticipated significant restrictions in civil rights by the new government
As was I – and all I got in such conversation was the breath of fresh air rubbish. Of course I ended up in all sorts of fights because I told them all they were delusional and that it would all end in tears. We must have been talking to different sets of people back then but it seems to me that much of the country was caught up in the euphoria and collective hallucenation that went with New Labour.
Nevertheless the vibes I get in Aus now are all an exact echo to me of the 97 UK blindness.
I’m certainly no fan of Howard (here’s what I wrote about him a few days after he lost the election), but I wouldn’t go that far. When comparing him with his contemporaries in the developed, middleweight-and-up countries, I’d say that he was the best of a bad bunch during his tenure. I know, that isn’t saying much at all.
I wouldn’t be so sure CountingCats. I think you underestimate this little, bespectacled, sneaki weasel’s ability to cause the damage. After all, he managed to build his shitty political capital on little lies that Aussies bought so eagerly, because they wanted to. Look how much evil has been generated by this “Sorry” garbage…
Looks as like the US is about to go through something rather similar with the Obama Effect©™.
Y’know, hated conservative government replaced by vacuous but inspiring leader suffering from Evangelical Personality Disorder, lots of talk of “change” and “hope” and so on. Sad.
Bah. Bush is no conservative.
Here in the US the conservatives and libertarians are losing ground because they assumed everyone realized, what with the fall of the Sovs and all, statism is a bad way to go. But the average voter doesn’t think about such things and has to be reminded. Friedman put it best:
We need to drive that point home to the average voter, or things will only get worse. With the complete domination the left has over the schools and the media, young adults can graduate from college now without ever being exposed to this idea.
Sunfish: If it helps, the video store employee was simply wrong about PATRIOT requiring your SSN for video rentals.
That matches my experience with something over 95% of reports that “the PATRIOT act requires/authorized/allowed …”.
It would be interesting to know, from the intellectual standpoint, where he got the idea, or if he was just making it up on the spot. Did his manager make it up?
Somebody made up that ridiculous excuse, and it would be (very mildly) interesting to know who, and why.
In the US, the law does not require you to use your SS# for anything besides federal or state ID’s, or for what the number was originally intended, to collect social security payments.
You have the right to refuse to give out your SS#. However, businesses don’t have to offer you either services or products if you don’t. If you live in the US, you should protect your SS#, but the reality is that your SS# has most likely been exposed several times through various breaches and data loss issues. It simply isn’t secure.
So, the hippocratic response to this problem would be “well, let’s not make ANOTHER database where our SS# could be even MORE at risk”.
And of course, GOVERNMENT TO THE RESCUE!!!-that’s exactly what the REAL ID Act will do, much the same as this lovely “in-country passport”.
It is very important that people email, mail, or otherwise pester the vermin who spoke those words. Her life must be made miserable; she must be made to realise that expressions of totalitarian views have consequences.
As the libertarian, Sean Gabb, likes to say, there are not enough sturdy lamposts to cope with the number of people who, come the libertarian dawn, will be hanged.
By all means email the moronic minister who said this. But a fat lot of good it will do: I wrote to my MP Glenda Jackson twice about the loss of the child benefit database and my adamant opposition to ID cards and all the rest of the paraphernalia of the surveillance state. And not so much as the ghost of a reply. Couldn’t we get an MP (there must be one decent one left, surely) to ask Brown at PMQs whether he agrees with this remark? Otherwise there’s no option but to be like the French and hurl paving stones at the bastards.
Glenda Jackson has actually been one of the few Government MPs to vote consistently against the ID scheme.
I did try to get precisely that PMQ asked. I think it needed the press to pick up on Hillier’s remark for it to have the momentum required.
I know Glenda has consistently voted against ID cards. That’s one reason why I wrote to her. A pity then she couldn’t be bothered to reply.
I ran into this sour cow when she was a councillor in Islington. She came to explain to us what was happening to our private residence as the spongers got their houses opposite. It turned out that the average flat size was some 20% larger than the flats the hard working classes were buying, she thought it entirely fair that one set of people should work and pay for smaller accomodation than they are being compelled to provide to others.
I can assure you that she is an out and out communist who believes that getting out of bed should only be done with the permission of the stasi. The sooner folks like this are removed preferably from life itself, but definately from public office, the better.
TMan:
At one point, maybe. However, collecting SSN’s for other governmental purposes has largely been legalized: required at the state level for hunting/fishing licenses, and for certain other professional licenses. I’m not 100% but I think I remember seeing it demanded on my application for my EMT certificate. Not to mention for admission to state colleges or universities, with a threat of dire consequences (mostly amounting to an extra $200 tuition for three credit hours) for failure to disclose.
On the Federal side, I know that the FCC demands an SSN from all individual license applicants, and claims that they will not issue a license without it. I think that BATFE does likewise with Federal Firearms License applications. I don’t have a great deal of interaction with the Federals, so there might me other things I’m missing.
Anyway, this is why I avoid asking for people’s SSN’s at work. Too much potential for mischief (Police reports are open to public inspection, remember) and it’s frankly irrelevant in 99% of the paper I do.
This has today been picked up by Ian Dale on his blog. So maybe it will get some traction.
The uncorrected version from Hansard now here:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmhaff/uc365-i/uc36502.htm
From which it appears she said in her answer to Q72:
…it entitles people but we are not using it as an entitlement card – WTF is she talking about? Does even she know?
Further on Ms Hillier, she doesn’t seem to keen to talk to her constituents. The rather wonderful hearfromyourmp.com(Link) web site shows that 358 of her constituents have asked to send out emails – the highest number of any MP.
From the site:
Clearly she is perfectly happy with nonsense since she has ignored 6 such e-mails.
Yup, that there is a competition grade prize winning bit of double-speak.
An internal passport?like they used to have in the bad old days of communist Russia?My God these people really are a shower of totalitarianist shitheads,God i really really want an AK47.