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Telegraph reports that David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, obtained political backing at a meeting of the Cabinet’s domestic affairs committee and a statement has been pencilled in for next Thursday, the last day of the current Commons session.
Whitehall officials said final details had still to be agreed but no meeting of the full Cabinet is considered necessary to endorse what will be one of the most controversial decisions of Labour’s six years in power.
The ID card will be required by everyone over 16 – more than 40 million people – and cost around £40, though with concessions for the elderly and the poor. Each card will contain biometric data, such as an image of a person’s iris or fingerprint, so police and other authorities can confirm the holder’s identity.
So this is it then? Tagged, finger-printed, iris-scanned, data about us stored on a ‘central database’, at the mercy of government bureaucrats.
I suppose the only thing left is the way of the late Mr Willcock who was the last person prosecuted in Britain for refusing to produce his wartime ID card and he spearheaded a public campaign that led to their abolition 50 years ago.
ID cards were introduced in 1939 but remained in use after the war to help in the administration of food rationing. The police had powers to see ID cards in certain circumstances. If an individual did not have one when asked, it had to be produced at a police station within two days.
This was where the law stood when Mr Willcock, 54, was stopped by Pc Harold Muckle as he drove in Finchley, north London, on Dec 7, 1950. The constable asked him to produce his national registration card. Mr Willcock refused.
Mr Willcock was charged under the provisions of the National Registration Act 1939. He argued that the emergency legislation was now redundant because the emergency was clearly at an end. The magistrates convicted Mr Willcock, as they were obliged to, but gave him an absolute discharge. He decided to test the law in the higher courts. Each found against him on the grounds that the statute remained in force and could only be reversed by an Order in Council.
In 1951, the Tories won the general election, and abolished ID cards the following year. Mr Willcock lived just long enough to see them go. He dropped dead in the National Liberal Club in December 1952 while debating the case against socialism.
I am not sure this would work nowadays, after many years of Labour rampaging through the justice system. However, it may be worth a try…
Stand have written a letter to Guardian regarding the news a Cabinet memo from Home Secretary leaked over the weekend about the introduction of an ID card scheme:
Several newspapers have been quite sensible and seen through Mr Blunkett’s rather optimistic, misleading and unrealistic assessment of the “help” they might provide in some areas (asylum seekers, terrorists, benefits fraudsters, identity thieves etc) and have published articles on the subject. Some others (curiously, all the ones owned by a certain Australian-American) have been rather more swayed by Mr Blunkett’s rhetoric. The Guardian, though — who were very good at giving the consultation due exposure and who raised some interesting and valid points on the subject some months ago — have been strangely silent. So we wrote them a letter. They’ve not yet published it, but we’ll put up a link, should they do so.
I am in the process of researching and writing a (long) piece on the story of how Australia came within a hair’s breadth of introducing compulsory ID cards in 1987, which will be posted either here or to my own blog in the next couple of days. However, while researching this, I ran the following 1986 quotation from then Australian (Labor) Health minister Dr Neal Blewett, who was in charge of the ID card plan at the time.
… we shouldn’t get too hung up as socialists on privacy because privacy, in many ways is a bourgeois right that is very much associated with the right to private property.
Yes, that’s right. This was meant as an argument in favour of ID cards.
On the issue of the (ultimately defeated) proposal for ID cards in Australia, I strongly recommend this article, which was written at the time and gives a thorough overview of what happened. The early stages of the then Australian government’s efforts to introduce the card seem eerily similar to anyone who has been watching the recent efforts of the British government. The later stages – a long drawn out battle on the part of the government to pass the enabling legislation which was blocked by the Australian senate, rising opposition to the scheme as the public learned more and more about the proposal and eventually a defeat for the government due to flaws in the drafting of the legislation – are much less likely here due to the lack of the strong bicameral system, sadly.
That said, the lesson that the more that is known about such proposals the less the public like them is surely an important one. In Britain, we really need to get the message out as fast and as comprehensively as possible. The other encouraging thing about the Australian example is that by the end of the fight the public was so against the idea that no Australian government has even dreamed of suggesting an ID card since, and none will any time soon. (This hasn’t prevented the government constructing extensive databases of information on its citizens, however).
I said nothing because I wasn’t a panhandler. In Cincinnati, they are coming for the panhandlers through mandatory ID card registration. I’m not a terribly large fan of panhandlers, but is the solution tagging them and releasing them back into the wild?
I understand why it is necessary for people to register for drivers licenses. Driving is a privilege, not a right. But is panhandling? Surely I have the right to sit on a public street corner and, while not harassing anyone, say or do whatever I want. And certainly people have the right to give me money if they want to, so why is it that panhandlers need to register?
Cross posted from miniluv.
Commenting on David Blunkett’s proposal for a £40 compulsory ID card, Liberty spokesman Barry Hugill said:
The real beneficiary of such a policy will be the fraudsters who will make a fortune selling forged cards. There is no evidence that ID cards lead to a reduction in crime yet the Government is contemplating spending at least £1.5bn on the scheme.
This is a Government that cannot manage to pay tax credits, deliver passports or enforce child maintenance payments without catastrophic system failure. Does anyone seriously believe it could manage something as technologically complex as a national ID card?’
Liberty
An opinion piece about the identity cards news in Telegraph is yet again explaining what is wrong with Blunkett’s argument. Basically, each of the claims made by the Home Secretary in support of his pet scheme is wrong.
- First, Mr Blunkett says that there is strong public support for the idea. In fact, the Home Office’s recent consultation exercise focused on the concept of an entitlement card, a very different prospect. (Also, according to this Out-law article, the goverment has admited that the public opposes the ID card scheme.)
- The Home Secretary goes on to argue ID cards will help fight crime. This is one of those assertions that is forever being made, but hardly ever substantiated… The public mood is said to have changed since September 11, 2001, but no one has explained – or even seriously tried to explain – how ID cards would have thwarted those bombers, many of whom died in possession of forged papers.
- Nor, by the way, are ID cards a solution to illegal immigration. The root of the asylum problem is not that we cannot find clandestine entrants, but that we never enforce their deportation.
- More faulty still is Mr Blunkett’s central proposition, as set out in a letter to his Cabinet colleagues: “The argument that identity cards will inhibit our freedom is wrong. We are strengthened in our liberty if our identity is protected from theft; if we are able to access the services we are entitled to; and if our community is better protected from terrorists.” In an appendix to Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell describes how a concept can be traduced if the words used to express it lose their meaning. The example he gives, uncannily, is the word “free”. Now here is Mr Blunkett using “freedom” to mean more state control.
- Any doubts as to the wisdom of the scheme must surely be removed by the Home Secretary’s final argument in its favour: that we are “out of kilter with Europe”. Indeed we are, thank heaven. Policemen in Britain are seen as citizens in uniform, not agents of the government.
The most worrying is Blunkett’s spin on the concept of freedom. In his view we are strengthened in our liberty if our identity is protected from theft; if we are able to access the services we are entitled to; and if our community is better protected from terrorists. This is vaguely based on the distinction between negative and positive liberty, which are not merely two distinct kinds of liberty; they can be seen as rival, incompatible interpretations of a single political ideal.
Negative liberty is the absence of obstacles, barriers or constraints. One has negative liberty to the extent that actions are available to one in this negative sense. Positive liberty is the possibility of acting – or the fact of acting – in such a way as to take control of one’s life and realize one’s fundamental purposes. While negative liberty is usually attributed to individual agents, positive liberty is sometimes attributed to collectivities, or to individuals considered primarily as members of given collectivities.
Blunkett and his New Labour chums are classic and rather unexceptional anti-liberals. I use the term liberal in its original meaning, based on negative definition of liberty and claiming that in order to protect individual liberty one should place strong limitations on the activities of the state. In Blunkett’s mind, the pursuit of liberty (whether of the individual or of the collectivity) requires state intervention, which, by definition, is not contradictory with limitations on personal freedom. As a result, the protests of civil liberties groups do not make sense to him.
The concept of freedom as being unprevented from doing whatever one might desire to do is alien to him. According to Isaiah Berlin the defender of positive freedom will take an additional step that consists in conceiving of the self as wider than the individual and as represented by an organic social whole – “a tribe, a race, a church, a state, the great society of the living and the dead and the yet unborn”. The true interests of the individual are to be identified with the interests of this whole, and individuals can and should be coerced into fulfilling these interests, for they would not resist coercion if they were as rational and wise as their coercers.
I will not grant Blunkett’s social and political philosophy such level of ‘sophistication’. I will say that his are the simple and toxic insticts of a collectivist and a statist and that those protesting policies based on them will have their words muffled by the Big Blunkett.
The Telegraph reports that a leaked memo revealed that David Blunkett is pushing the Cabinet to back national identity cards for everyone aged 16 and over. The Home Secretary insists in a memo to Cabinet colleagues that rather than limiting freedom, his plan for ID cards would reinforce people’s sense of liberty by making it easier for them to use services and protecting them from criminals and terrorists.
It is understood that he wants to introduce legislation in the autumn to allow cards to be brought in within the next few years. A full Cabinet discussion is expected within the next fortnight.
Privacy International, the civil rights watchdog, will mount a campaign against the plans this week. Simon Davies, its director, said:
This is without doubt the most threatening issue for civil rights and freedoms since the Second World War.
The Sunday Times reports that in a leaked letter Home Secretary David Blunkett describes the case for Compulsory National Identity Cards as “overwhelming”.
Citizens would pay £39 for the privilege of carrying a card containing biometric information. It would not be compulsory to carry your card at all times however you would have to show it to the police within a few days of demand. So don’t forget to take it with you if you’re on holiday.
Blunkett adds that “a highly organised minority” would “campaign vocally” against the cards.
Too right we will. This plan is a serious threat to civil liberties in Britain and must be stopped.
Cross-posted from The Chestnut Tree Cafe
The article on the ST site appears unavailable just now, you can read the BBC summary.
Exactly a year ago, Melanie Phillips has written an excellent article ID cards are not the British way. Alas, her arguments are as necessary and relevant as they were then.
She addresses every point in the debate, from the increased need for security, terrorism, mass immigration, problems with ‘compulsory’ entitlement cards, personal information on ‘smart card’, causes of rising crime etc.
The most central argument, though, is difference between the British concept of liberty and the European one:
Britain is not the same as Europe. We have a very different approach to liberty. Here, everything is permitted unless it is forbidden. People can go about their business without being expected to give an account of themselves.
By contrast, in Europe freedom is something that has to be codified and granted from above. So Europeans have always been used to producing ‘papers’ to prove themselves, a practice that we have always found unacceptable.
And her last paragraph certainly belongs here, on White Rose:
Now, thrashing around in panic to show that it is getting on top of our social problems, it is not coming up with policies that actually work but is proposing instead to nail down still further the coffin of British liberty.
The Washington Times reports that the FBI has concluded that the Matricula Consular card, issued by the Mexican government to Mexicans living in the United States, “is not a reliable form of identification” and poses a criminal and terrorist threat.
Steven McCraw, the assistant director of the FBI’s Office of Intelligence, said the identification cards are easy to obtain through fraud, and lack adequate security measures to prevent easy forgery. He cited examples of alien smugglers being arrested with up to seven different cards and an Iranian national who was arrested with a Matricula Consular card in his name.
Opponents of the cards’ use say they have turned into a back-door amnesty that allows illegal aliens to blend into society by letting them obtain bank accounts and some state and local services. Rep. Elton Gallegly, California Republican said:
The only people who need these cards are illegal immigrants, and sometimes criminals or terrorists.
None of the witnesses at a House immigration panel held last week could dispute that claim and the State Department admitted they have not studied the issue.
Link via World Watch Daily.
In Malta the use of ID cards is regulated by the Identity Card Act first enacted in 1976.
Typically, they were introduced as a way of addressing a very specific concern (in our case, it seems to have been the concern over the possibility of electoral fraud) and slowly, but surely, they gained a more widespread use as more and more Government departments introduced them in their transactions with the public.
Here’s an example I can distinctly remember. Fifteen years ago when I was doing my O-levels you were issued a temporary identification document by the Examinations Department. Your official ID card was given to you only later when you turned 16. Then in 1993 the Act was amended so that an official ID card would be issued to all those aged 14 or older as a way of including those students sitting for their ‘O’s. And today, teenagers who are too young to work legally or to sign contracts have to have an official ID card.
It was all done in the name of ‘convenience’ and could anyone possibly be against that? I have been socialised into this system and its convenience and I know that when I encounter officialdom I either pull out the ID card from my wallet or else chant my name and the six digits and a letter that make up my ID to the public official who asks for it. It has become an automatic reflex.
Recently a very minor and a not untypical incident served as a bit of an eye-opener. I was driving back home in the early hours of morning when I happened to encounter a police roadblock. I slowed down and the policeman signalled me to pull to the side of the road. This I did. He took a look at me and my car, noted nothing suspicious and politely asked me for my name and ID number which I gave in a typical knee-jerk reaction when asked this question by a public official. He took note and signalled me to move on.
It was while I was driving away that the question popped in my head: what was the purpose of asking drivers for their ID number at a roadblock when there was nothing that was suspect? And I could not answer that question. The policeman probably could not either. In my case giving name and ID on being asked to do so by a public official has become automatic. In the case of the police officer (and in the case of all public officials) asking the question has also become automatic.
The use of ID cards has become so generalised and they have become so deeply ingrained in our culture that nobody notices. They have become an ordinary part of our everyday lives. Now it is whoever queries these practices who is made to feel awkward, as if he were a paranoid nutcase. In 1976 when the law was introduced there were a few voices, however feeble, who protested; now there are none. And that is what is scariest. Living in an environment that requires official identification all the time is bad enough. Living in an environment that requires official identification and subtly pressuring you never to question such practices is much, much worse.
When I was in Spain a couple of weeks ago, I paid for most things with cash, and I only used credit cards occasionally. The first time I did so was when I wished to buy a ticket for the Bilbao Guggenheim museum. Upon handing over my Visa card, I was asked for identification. I did what I usually do when I encounter a request of this nature that I am not used to. I smiled, complied with the request by getting out my driver’s licence and handing it over, and asking “Why?”.
The lady behind the counter looked briefly at me, and explained that things were done differently in different countries, and that in Spain they liked to check identification rather than a signature, because signatures are easy to forge and an identification cheque reduces fraud.
As far as it goes, this is probably true. It probably does reduce fraud. (On the other hand, a signature on a credit card slip is as much about making a contract legal as it is about identification. The reason we use such a flimsy means of identification is that the signature requirement wasn’t originally about identification). However, in this particular instance, an identity check was completely unnecessary. I do not expect that many people use stolen credit cards to buy tickets to art museums. However, the custom of asking for identification when credit cards are used in Spain is ingrained, so that it occurs even when it doesn’t make a great deal of logical sense. (I have occasionally been asked to produce identification in Australia and the UK when using credit cards to pay for expensive items of the sort that might be of value to thieves – for instance the laptop computer I am typing on now – but it only seems to happen when it does make some kind of logical sense).
A second thing that I observed in Spain was that a driver’s licence was not the sort of ID they really wanted to see. It was okay in the museum, but later on it became clear that what they meant by “ID” was my passport, although I could probably get away with a driver’s licence because I was a foreigner. In the case of Spanish people, what they wanted to see was a national ID card. Because everyone has to carry one of these around with them, the card’s use has expanded to the point that it is difficult to use a credit card without one. I don’t know precisely what the role of the compulsory ID card is under Spanish law, but Spanish people seem to need it to go about their day to day lives.
Of course, Spain actually was a fascist state until the mid 1970s, and quite probably the actual point of the card was that it would be needed for people to go about their day to day lives. I think the point may be that once such a card is in place and its use is part of everyday life, it is very hard to get rid of it. For that reason, introducing such a card is really not something to be done lightly.
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