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Register notes that UK public support for ID cards is declining, while opposition is hardening, and a surprising number – perhaps five million – would be prepared to take to the streets in opposition, according to a new opinion poll released today. The results, although they still show 61 per cent in support of the scheme, show committed opposition in sufficient numbers for poll tax-style disruption to be a very real possibility.
Since last month’s Detica survey, numbers strongly opposed to any kind of ID card have doubled from 6 per cent to 12 per cent. Within the opposition 28 per cent, which would translate as 4.9 million in the population as a whole, say they would participate in demonstrations, 16 per cent (2.8 million) would get involved in “civil disobedience” and 6 per cent (around a million) would be prepared to go to prison rather than register for a card. Talk is of course cheap at this stage, but this is still an indication of seriously vehement opposition just a few weeks after the scheme was unveiled, and even the more favourable (for the Government) Detica poll showed quite clearly that the vast majority of people knew practically nothing of what the scheme entailed. And the more they learn, the less they may like it.
The latest survey was commissioned by Privacy International and conducted by YouGov, and obviously its intentions differ from the Detica survey, so the results are not always directly comparable. But some of the most interesting numbers stem from the differences. YouGov found that in addition to losing numbers, support is weakening, with people less sure, and rather lower numbers prepared to go for a compulsory scheme (which, ultimately, it will be). And some of the key components are decisively rejected by the public as a whole, which is what you might call a bit of a problem. Most (47 per cent versus 41 per cent) don’t want to have to tell the government when they change their address, and 24 per cent strongly oppose revealing it in the first place.
It is of course utterly illogical for people to be in favour of the scheme while opposing aspects of it whose removal would render it (as currently envisaged) unworkable. But The Detica poll also showed that support of the scheme was based on some pretty staggering misconceptions, so perhaps what we have here is a picture of a nation on its way to an education – as they join the dots up, it’s surely rather more likely that they’ll begin to reject the scheme as a whole, rather than, say, concluding it’s OK for the government to keep tabs on your address after all.
Link via Curiouser and curiouser!
Belgium is to begin issuing biometric passports before the end of the year, while in the US (which could be said to have started all this), the State Department is to begin a trial run this autumn, with full production hoped for next year. Register speculates:
The apparent ease with which these countries appear to be switching passport standards does raise just the odd question about the UK’s very own ID card scheme, which proposes to ship its first biometric passports not soon, but in three years. Regular readers will recall that Home Secretary David Blunkett justifies the ID card scheme on the basis that most of the cost is money we’d have to spend anyway, because we need to upgrade our passports to meet US and ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organisation) standards, and that by making this investment the UK will be putting itself ahead of the game, technology-wise, and that we shall all therefore be technology leaders and rich.
The biometric passport system the US intends to use simply seems to be an addition of the necessary machine readable capabilities to the existing system. Passport applications, including photograph, will still be accepted via mail, and the picture will then be encoded, added to the database and put onto the chip that goes in the passport. As you may note, a picture is in these terms a biometric, while a camera is a biometric reader, which they are. But don’t noise it around, or you’ll screw the revenues of an awful lot of snake-oil salesmen.
Back in the UK, we are of course rather more rigorous in our interpretation of the matter, and the system and its schedule will be priced accordingly. But should we worry about losing our lead? No, not exactly. We should worry about spending a great deal of money on a system which will largely police ourselves, and which – in the event of it actually working – will probably turn out to be a huge white elephant.
With all the coverage and uproar about the images of American troops, there is probably not much attention spared for the pictures of British troops also accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners/captured. The difference is that the British ones were faked and the saga that started with their appearance in the Daily Mirror with headline ‘Vile’ has come to a climax with the sacking of the editor of the strongly ‘anti-war’ newspaper, Piers Morgan.
The Army has made a forceful rebuttal of the accusations and demonstrated why it was convinced that the Daily Mirror photographs were fakes. The arguments focused on four items – the weapons the soldiers were carrying while ‘abusing’ the Iraqi prisoner, the vehicle in which the alleged assault was supposed to happen, the soldiers’ appearance in the photos i.e. wrong hat, no watch and no tan and the t-shirt worn by the captured.
Our own source listed the ‘things wrong with the photos’ before the published Army rebuttal. It pretty much covers the same points plus a few incidental details I thought you might find interesting.
- The most importanty reasons – it’s too clean. Everything in Iraq was covered in dust and shit. Everything in these pictures is clean- the soldiers, the ‘prisoner’, the truck itself. The uniforms look freshly pressed, let alone washed (after being on patrol..?) Same for the ‘prisoners’. Squaddies have been patrolling the streets, climbed in the back of this truck, and there’s not a mark of dust or mud anywhere? Or was the truck specially cleaned so they would have clean enviroment to beat someone up in? Impossible.
- No one’s sweating. It’s 40+ degrees, the soldiers are beating a guy up, he’s being beaten up, and no one is sweating. Impossible.
- This guy is being beaten almost to death. There’s not a single mark on him. Impossible.
- The truck is a Bedford. We had very few DAF’s in Iraq and all were used by the stores department. Troops on patrol used Saxon APC’s or Landrovers. Try to drive a 8 ft wide truck down the back alleys of Basra catching looters. No way.
- Those photos are way too good. There are enough photo nuts at Samizdata they should know that. [ed. no need to abuse our contributors…] Squaddies in the back of a truck taking crystal clear pictures, with no bad shadaw or anything else? Compare to the US photos that are grainy and blurred in places.
- There’s not a single identifying mark on teh soldiers. No tattoos, no watches, no rings, nothing. And nothing to identify their Regiment or unit either. What’s the point of a ‘trophy photo’ if you can’t prove your in it? You might hide your face, but you would wear something you can point at to prove to your mates that it is you. They won’t believe you otherwise.
- There’s no movemnet. There’s no blurring, so unless they are using expensive, super high speedcameras (on patrol? In Basra?) there is no movement. And if the guy in the floor is being hit, or has been hit, I’m Dutch [ed. no he isn’t Dutch, we can vouch for that.]. I have been hit – you automatically curl up and away and try to protect your head, you just do no lie there stretched out.
- Since when do sqauddies take happy snaps in black and white?
- The rifles. No slings on them (no way do yoiu take your sling off in Basra- someone might grab your rifle) and where did they put them? They look like A1s, though hard to tell. The Mirror’s source claims they were A3s, which will come as news to the manufacturer, let alone to everyone else.
- The kit. They aren’t in proper patrol order, the pouches are not only undone they look mostly empty, and there is no sign of body armour, helmets, or the “platypus” water bags everyone carried. Nor is anyone wearing sweat rags, shamaghs, or anything else. Never saw a squaddy look like that on patrol.
- The hats. Guys did have soft hats like that, were not supposed to wear them on patrol, it was berets or helmets according to the threat. But even suppose they were wearing the hats – they are wearing the hats whilst beating a guy up?! Put on a soft hat, then start moving furniture around your house. See how long you leave the hat on. But very convenient, if you need to wear non-unit specific but obvious “desert” clothes for a nice picture for the Mirror…
- The T-shirt. There were guys wearing T-shirts like that, but not many – it would have been a bit sensitive. It could have been worn by a looter – but mostly bloody convenient, only if you want to show a picture of an ‘Iraqi being beaten up’.
Red Herrings:
- The way the boots are laced. It is wrong, but maybe that guy just laced his different, no one cared that much as we had bigger fish to fry.
- Iraqi looks pale. Many do under their clothes.
- Hessian hoods. Those hoods were used to blindfold prisoners on capture, and to prevent them escaping – though not normally for looters but for higher importance/risk deliberate captures.
The really big point here is what the hell happened to Innocent until Proven Guilty? The Mirror is arguing it is up to us to prove the pictures are false.
Quite. Fortunately, the Army did conclusively prove the pictures were faked, the Mirror admitted they were a hoax, fired the editor and apologised (not unreservedly though). However, the damage done to the morale and reputation of the soldiers and the regiment subjected to such horrendous accusations cannot be easily undone…
It is my belief that unless we demonstrate that ID cards are not only complex, unnecessary, difficult to implement and expensive but also above all detrimental to the objective they are trying to achieve e.g. security, we will not capture the imagination of those who can’t think off-hand why Big Blunkett should not have his way with ID cards. After all, we have nothing to hide and we all use driving licenses, credit cards, store and loyalty cards etc, etc.
We need to spell out more often just what kind of danger an ID card and similar attempts by states to hoard and tag its citizens pose to the individual.
Darren Andrews of Freedom-Central.Net does just that in a structured and erudite manner. He looks at the liberties that will be lost if a government ID card system is introduced:
Principle 1: Governments receive their just powers from the governed
Principle 2: The Right to the Presumption of Innocence
Principle 3: The Right to Anonymity and Privacy
Principle 4: The Right to Free Speech
This sentence should resound throughout the debate:
Freedom is not about opinion, it is about principle because there is an unchanging commonality in people that regards neither time nor place, and there are unalterable laws that govern human life and all who are a part of it.
Read the whole thing…
Belatedly, but no less relevantly, I was directed to the following Letter to Editor published in the Daily Telegraph last Saturday. It is from a British Army officer who was (still is?) in Basra. Its content was heartily approved by the Samizdata’s own Our Man in Basra – his quotable comment was I could have written every word myself…
Sir, I am a serving Army officer. Publication of photographs that are faked – as appears to be the growing consensus – does not assist our soldiers on the ground but, while such abuse is intolerable to us, brutalised Iraqi opinion differs from ours. Most Iraqis are baffled as to why we do not employ such methods.
Suggestions I have encountered while working with Iraqi governance institutions in Basrah include: crushing looters’ hands, wiring pylon saboteurs to the national grid and hanging rioters by the neck and beating them to death.
In Iraqi eyes, it is not through torture that we have failed Iraq. One year on from liberation, improvements have not materialised. We still seek military solutions to problems caused by policy. The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) inherited and perpetuated a Soviet-style centralised bureaucracy without the clear central direction or the threats to back it up that made the Ba’athist system work.
Poor salary decisions mean that operating budgets cannot be paid, so, while there are new police cars, they have no fuel and Iraqi jails lack money for food.
On March 13, after nine months of operations, the Rapid Regional Response Programme, the CPA’s principal project fund for improving Iraqi life had, in the South, identified almost $42 million (£23.5 million) of projects but, owing to excessively bureaucratic contracting, completed only a shameful $627,671 worth. Emergency Infrastructure Project funding achieved more, but millions of dollars worth of projects will not be completed when the June deadline expires.
Yet many Iraqis will endure all this for freedom and democracy. In terms of freedom, Iraqis are still arrested, held indefinitely without trial and, apparently, tortured. In terms of democracy, the CPA, fearing calls for national elections in which Islamic parties may succeed, has banned direct, democratic elections in favour of caucus-style selections derided as undemocratic by most Iraqis.
Meanwhile, those such as Moqtada al-Sadr, the rogue cleric regarded by most Iraqis as a foolish upstart whose lack of support would be revealed by polling, terrorise the country with armed militias. Next month, the CPA will hand over sovereignty and responsibility to an Iraqi nation singularly unequipped to cope.
Iraqis I have spoken to confirm that ousting Saddam was the right thing to do, but if overturning unpleasant regimes is to become a regular feature of foreign policy, we should ensure we have something better to replace them with.
In short, cherchez le politicien.
Long eyelashes and watery eyes could thwart iris scanning technology used for the government’s ID card trial. An MP who volunteered to take part in the trial at the UK Passport Service headquarters in London complained the scanning was uncomfortable.
Home Affairs Select Committee member Bob Russell, who suffers from an eye complaint, said his eyes watered and staff were unable to scan his iris. Project director Roland Sables told MPs:
The pundits tell us that we should expect 7% across the board to fail with iris recognition, mainly due to positioning in front of the camera. Others are due to eye malformations, watery eyes and long eyelashes in a small percentage.
Hard contact lenses could also prove problematic. Mr Russell expressed concern about the scanning after his experience.
I think this is going to cause serious problems for people who suffer with bright lights and people with epilepsy. I think it will be necessary at every machine to have at least one member of staff who is a qualified first aider to a high level. I can see people keeling over with epileptic fits.
People with faint fingerprints would also be unable to register on the system, as would manual labourers, particularly those who work with cement or shuffle paper regularly, Mr Sables told the MPs.
The Plan is that by 2013, 80% of the population are expected to have a biometric passport or driving licence, at which point the government will decide whether to make the ID cards compulsory. The remaining 20% are presumably construction workers with long eyelashes, wearing hard contact lenses and suffering from epileptic fits…
Here is the answer to my question in the final paragraph of my earlier post about the treatement of Iraqi detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison:
On 31 January 2004, the Commander, CFLCC, appointed MG Antonio M. Taguba, Deputy Commanding General Support, CFLCC, to conduct this investigation. MG Taguba was directed to conduct an informal investigation under AR 15-6 into the 800th MP Brigade’s detention and internment operations. Specifically, MG Taguba was tasked to:
a. (U)Inquire into all the facts and circumstances surrounding recent allegations of detainee abuse, specifically allegations of maltreatment at the Abu Ghraib Prison (Baghdad Central Confinement Facility (BCCF));
b. (U) Inquire into detainee escapes and accountability lapses as reported by CJTF-7, specifically allegations concerning these events at the Abu Ghraib Prison;
c. (U) Investigate the training, standards, employment, command policies, internal procedures, and command climate in the 800th MP Brigade, as appropriate;
d. (U) Make specific findings of fact concerning all aspects of the investigation, and make any recommendations for corrective action, as appropriate. (ANNEX 4)
These were the findings:
(U) The US Army Criminal Investigation Command (CID), led by COL Jerry Mocello, and a team of highly trained professional agents have done a superb job of investigating several complex and extremely disturbing incidents of detainee abuse at the Abu Ghraib Prison. They conducted over 50 interviews of witnesses, potential criminal suspects, and detainees. They also uncovered numerous photos and videos portraying in graphic detail detainee abuse by Military Police personnel on numerous occasions from October to December 2003. Several potential suspects rendered full and complete confessions regarding their personal involvement and the involvement of fellow Soldiers in this abuse. Several potential suspects invoked their rights under Article 31 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and the 5th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. (ANNEX 25)
→ Continue reading: A very long report
Every time I have a chance to read the news these days, which is not often as business gets in the way, I come across more pictures of American troops abusing, humiliating and otherwise subjecting Iraqi prisoners to appalling acts. As I have even less time to read what the blogosphere has to say about that, these are mainly thoughts based on the news and conversations with those who have been closer to action that I ever will be.
What the Abu Ghraib prison guards did is despicable, inhumane and immoral. No explanations and no amount of blame-shifting can change that. They should not even try – their posing in the photos shows how they enjoyed what they did. They disgraced the US army uniform and diminished the sacrifices of all those soldiers who were fighting, patroling and reconstructing Iraq, in the eyes of the world and the very people they were trying to help.
Abu Ghraib was a notorious prison in times of Saddam’s terror, where people were routinely tortured and disappeared. It probably still bears witness to the horrors that took place there. Perhaps some of the current inmates of the prisons were former guards or people who put others in it.
The prisoners were either ex-Bathists or Saddam’s soldiers i.e. PoWs and/or convicted or suspected criminals. In the first case, intelligence military or other was essential for protection of both the ordinary Iraqis and the troops. In the second case, generally, Iraqi prisoners were taken to the tribal leader or a local judge who would let them off. There was (is) no deterrent for those who wished to commit crimes in post-Saddam Iraq. The power vacuum was real for everyone. Iraqis did not know how to understand the new authority, they pretty much expected the new ‘masters’ to hang or shoot a few people to establish order and were surprised and frustrated when this did not happen.
A common ‘excuse’ by the perpetrators of the vile behaviour captured in the pictures is that they were obeying orders or that interrogators ‘turned the blind eye’ and let them make the rules for ‘softening up the prisoners to be interrogated’ as they went along. I find this very hard to believe, first of all, the ‘I was only obeying orders’ has not worked since WWII. Secondly, any interrogator worth his salt would certainly not want a bunch of sadistic prison guards demented with drugs to do with the Abu Ghraib prisoners the things we saw in the pictures. Humiliation can be counter-productive and even if it were to be used, it would need to be done by the interrogator himself to reap the ‘benefits’ of such treatment in the immediate questioning. ‘Shock of capture’ is far more effective as confusion, disorientation and uncertainly generate the kind of fear that is more likely to make people talk than subjecting them to all kinds of humiliation. That is more likely to bread resistance and negate the effects of the capture. This obviously varies according to circumstaces but the overall objective is always to control the experiences of the captured.
As for what made those reservists commit such atrocities, there is no mystery there. Anyone who has been bullied at school or any other institution knows just how easy it is for one or two sadistic sociopaths to pull an entire group in and then ‘socialise’ them and the rest of the environment to their abusive behaviour. This surely is far easier to do within a very strict hierarchy such as the military where the main instigator is in the position of power. This in no way exonerates those ‘pulled in’ from their individual responsibility just explains how something so unacceptable can become the social norm in an enclosed environment such as a prison. The real scandal here where was the hierarchy above the power-crazed prison guards?
CNET News.com reports technical problems have delayed the British government’s trials for biometric ID cards by three months. The failure of fingerprint and iris-recognition equipment caused the delay, Home Secretary David Blunkett told members of Parliament this week.
The trial, involving the registration of 10,000 volunteers to record and test biometric ID data, was originally due to launch in February but did not begin until last week. As a result, the length of the project has been cut from six months to three months.
Note how the trial is shortened as a solution to the delay…
A representative for the Home Office told Silicon.com that the problems have now been rectified.
We have to make sure it is correctly configured before launching it. It’s essential we get the first installation right before it is rolled out across the country. We’ll learn our lessons from this. There were issues of failure in the equipment, but those have been rectified and the technical problems have been ironed out.
Hopefully, famous last words…
The new Wired has an article about a survey by MORI that found out that about 80 per cent of 1,000 British adults want a biometric identification card, citing concerns about illegal immigration and identity theft.
Though the survey shows that most Britons back national identity cards, there’s a wrinkle: Half said they won’t pay for it, and few were very familiar with the cards. Contrast that with the government’s plan to charge 35 pounds for an identity card good for 10 years, or 77 pounds for a card including passport, for every family member 16 to 80 years old.
Concerns about Big Brother? Try “bumbling brother,” with 58 percent of surveyed Britons predicting the government won’t be able to roll out new ID cards smoothly, and one-third saying their stored information won’t be safe. Still, most support such cards, principally to tackle illegal immigration and identity theft. The latter costs the United Kingdom 1.3 billion pounds per year.
In the United States, popular opinion and embarrassing biometric-test failures have blunted overt national ID card efforts, though U.S. passports and some states’ driver’s licenses will store biometric information soon, leading privacy activists to warn the IDs could become de facto national IDs.
A letter to the editor of the Daily Telegraph, from Dr Chris Williams, European Centre for the Study of Policing, Open University, Milton Keynes:
One problem with the proposal for a national ID card (News, Apr 27) is the security of the information in its “clean” database.
Although police all sign the Official Secrets Act, and are well paid, well supervised and largely trustworthy, at least one policeman has been sent to prison for selling the information on the Police National Computer to the highest bidder – in this case, credit reference agencies. HM Inspectorate of Constabulary recorded their concern over this practice in 1999 and recommended measures to stop it, yet the Police Complaints Commission admitted in 2002 that “there will always be a few officers willing to risk their careers by obtaining data improperly”.
So we can’t trust the police to keep a sensitive database watertight. Can we trust other state institutions or outsourcing companies such as Capita? To be usable, an ID card database has to be accessible by hundreds of thousands of people. And the security has to be permanent.
In 1938, the Gestapo took over the files of Interpol’s predecessor when they entered Vienna. If we put all our data eggs in one basket, we need to be certain that a DVD with all our details on it never gets to al-Qa’eda, the IRA or the unknown evils that the future doubtless holds.
James Hammerton’s Blog has a sound fisking of two pro-ID card articles published in the Times yesterday.
Michael Gove, author of one of the Times articles argues that given the changed circumstances of the 21st century we may need to reexamine this prejudice [prejudice against the state exercising arbitrary authority] where, in the west at least, the main threat to individuals comes not from state power as it did in the 20th century, but from terrorists who have the will and may get the means to carry out slaughter on a horrendous scale.
James spots the consistency in the Home Secretary’s policies:
To take the last part of that first, I’d respond that Blunkett has not merely “rethought” civil liberites, he (and Straw before him and Howard before him) has set out to dismantle them plain and simple. A “rethinking” would not have attacked every single protection across the board. The right to a jury trial, the presumption of innocence, the right to security of property, freedom of expression, freedom of association, doctor-patient confidentiality, lawyer-client confidentiality, freedom from arbitrary surveillance, the right to protest, all of these have been sytematically eroded. Every year since 1999 (before 9/11!), the government has produced bills with swingeing attacks on civil liberties. Only a small proportion of them could possibly be justified on the grounds they may help protect us from terrorism. Even where such measures can protect us from terrorism they’ve often been applied broadly weakening protections when the authorities are investigating crime in general rather than just terrorism.
He concludes with the point that cannot be repeated laudly and often enough:
Thus the state incompetence or inability to actually control would be terrorists and criminals and the odd clever civil libertarian via the system does not transfer to the state’s ability to control the law abiding majority with the system. The cynical might suggest that controlling the majority is the whole point, whilst crime fighting and dealing with terrorism are just the sales packaging.
Read the whole thing, as they say…
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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