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Telegraph reports that Tony Blair brushed aside Cabinet reservations last night and gave the Home Office the go-ahead to introduce compulsory identity cards following the discovery this week of a suspected British Muslim terrorist network.
Mr Blair said the deal he and David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, negotiated with the rest of the Cabinet no longer applied.
There is no longer a civil liberties objection to that. There is a series of vast logistical questions to be resolved and, in my judgment, logistics is the only time delay, otherwise it needs to move forward.
I am surprised. No longer a civil liberties objection to ID cards? That is a lie, as obvious as they get. Now I want to hear the clamour of protest and we shall do our best to add our voice.
So, ladies and gentlement. There we have it. I sincerely hoped that the day would never come. But it is here and what is it to be done?
More on the ICAO story first noted by Trevor. An international aviation group is completing new passport standards this week, setting the groundwork for all passports issued worldwide to include digitized photographs that a computer can read remotely and compare to the face of the traveler or to a database of mug shots.
Supporters hope the system will banish fake passports and help fight terrorism. But critics say the standards will enable a global infrastructure for surveillance and lead to a host of national biometric databases, including ones run by countries with troubling human rights records.
The ICAO has already settled on facial recognition as the standard biometric identifier, though countries may add fingerprints or iris scans if they wish. The standards body will vote on Friday whether to adopt radio-frequency ID chips, such as those used in Fast Pass toll systems, as the standard method of storing and transmitting the digitized information.
Simon Davies, director of human rights group Privacy International, said the ICAO hasn’t consulted with human rights groups and shouldn’t be involved at all.
The most troubling aspect of international standard setting is that it often occurs without any national dialogue through the diplomatic process. Governments merely use the standards bodies as a convenient means of implementing controversial policy.
Privacy International suggested that the ICAO should have adopted a standard that would allow computers at a border to match the traveler to the digital photo on a passport, but that did not permit any government to keep a central database of photos.
The group argued that facial recognition is not the most accurate identification benchmark, and that matching a person to an old photograph is problematic.
Speaking at his monthly news conference, Prime Minister Tony Blair has repeated his support for David “Big” Blunkett’s plan to impose compulsory national Identity Cards on innocent British citizens.
Blair claimed that there was “no longer a civil liberties objection” to ID Cards and that the only thing holding them back was logistics.
This statement shows Blair’s lack of understanding of the concept of civil liberties. Identity Cards turn citizens into suspects and deprive people of privacy.
The civil liberties objections to ID Cards are as strong now as they were fifty years ago.
Update: In the Guardian: PM hints at imminent ID card move.
Cross-posted from The Chestnut Tree Cafe
Wired has a follow-up story on the case of Nebraska farmer and his identity card (Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of the state of Nevada, 03-5554). The justices of the Supreme Court heard arguments last Monday in a first-of-its kind case that asks whether people can be punished for refusing to identify themselves.
The court took up the appeal of a Nevada cattle rancher who was arrested after he told a deputy that he had done nothing wrong and didn’t have to reveal his name or show an ID during an encounter on a rural road four years ago.
Larry “Dudley” Hiibel, 59, was prosecuted, based on his silence, and finds himself at the center of a major privacy rights battle. Hiibel, dressed in cowboy hat, boots and a bolo tie, was defiant outside the court.
I would do it all over again. That’s one of our fundamental rights as American citizens, to remain silent.
The case will clarify police powers in the post-Sept. 11 era, determining if officials can demand to see identification whenever they deem it necessary.
Nevada senior deputy attorney general Conrad Hafen told justices that “identifying yourself is a neutral act” that helps police in their investigations and doesn’t – by itself – incriminate anyone. But if that is allowed, several justices asked, what will be next? A fingerprint? Telephone number? E-mail address? What about a national identification card? Hiibel’s lawyer, Robert Dolan, told the court:
The government could require name tags, color codes.
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor pointed out the court never has given police the authority to demand someone’s identification, without probable cause they have done something wrong. But she also acknowledged police might want to run someone’s name through computers to check for a criminal history.
Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said if Hiibel loses, the government will be free to use its extensive data bases to keep tabs on people.
A name is now no longer a simple identifier; it is the key to a vast, cross-referenced system of public and private databases, which lay bare the most intimate features of an individual’s life.
There’s an interesting debate going on at Megan McArdle’s blog where she copies a post made by ‘Contributor A’
Nick Kristof says that a national ID, in the form of a beefed-up standard driver’s license, would add security without sacrificing much or any real liberty. (He doesn’t propose forcing people to carry it at all times, like some countries do.) Is he wrong on the second count, that the loss of liberty is essentially negligible?
Please don’t answer
– Biometrics don’t work. We’re assuming for the sake of argument that the technology can be made to work.
– It won’t add that much security. Since any security gain is good, I’m for anything that adds any security at all at an acceptable cost.
– It would be expensive – again, if there’s a measurable, even if modest, security gain, we’re assuming it’s worth quite a lot in dollar terms.
– It will infringe your right to be invisible. You don’t currently really have the right to be invisible. We’re assuming you’re a normal American who pays taxes, has a social-security number, answers the census, carries a driver’s license and has a credit-rating. Those few who have none of these things can keep that right–they just may not marry, drive, fly, travel abroad, work for pay or draw any government benefit whatsoever.
– You don’t like it in theory because government is bad. I want concrete examples of how a significant number of Americans could lose concrete rights.
– Ben Franklin once said “Those who would sacrifice liberty…” Yes, we know. I want an argument, not an aphorism.
There’s nearly 50 comments, many of them quite interesting. There was a lovely rebuttal by commenter Spec Bowers:
I have strong principled objections, but that’s not what you are asking for. Here’s a pragmatic objection: What if you misplace or lose your ID? Think about how long it takes today to get a replacement driver’s license or passport. Imagine a future where you are requested several times a day to produce your ID. How miserable might your life be if you couldn’t produce it?
Quite so.
The Home Office has tried to assure us that David “Big” Blunkett’s plan to impose compulsory National Identity Cards on innocent British citizens is not a threat to privacy. Yesterday that argument was finally blown out of the water.
The Guardian reports that ID Card usage will be tracked centrally. Stephen Harrison, the head of the Home Office’s identity card policy unit, admitted yesterday that the Government is “minded” to log every single ID Card usage and store the data centrally.
As ID Cards become used for more and more things, this data shadow will become larger and larger. Every time you use your ID Card for any purpose this information will be recorded. All available in a central government database at the touch of a button.
Of course, Harrison assures us that the data is only being collected to guard against abuse and that there will be “safeguards” to protect it. Some of us have heard such words before and don’t find them very reassuring.
Harrison’s admission yesterday confirms that compulsory ID Cards will effectively mean the end of privacy in the UK.
Cross-posted from The Chestnut Tree Cafe
Well, I expected Big Blunkett to try and take advantage of the Madrid atrocity to pursue his own political ends. Even I didn’t expect him to do so this quickly or this blatantly.
The Sunday Times reports that a row has erupted in cabinet after Home Secretary David Blunkett attempted to change the agreed government position on compulsory ID Cards. According to the report, Blunkett is attempting to sneak in to the draft Bill a clause that will allow a rapid move towards compulsion. This move is bitterly opposed by Jack Straw, Alistair Darling, Paul Boateng and Patricia Hewitt.
Although the draft was apparently published “earlier this month”, it seems clear that Big Blunkett is relying on public fear after Madrid to cynically push through his pet scheme.
We need to remind people at every opportunity that Spain already has a national Identity Card system – and it did nothing to stop the Madrid bombings.
Cross-posted from Big Blunkett – Watching David Blunkett
90% crud has an excellent post about government, security and privacy. He includes a quote by Bruce Schnier about central databases and data mining programmes from his article How we are fighting the war on terrorism/IDs and the illusion of security.
But any such system will create a third, and very dangerous, category: evildoers who don’t fit the profile. Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, Washington-area sniper John Allen Muhammed and many of the Sept. 11 terrorists had no previous links to terrorism. The Unabomber taught mathematics at UC Berkeley. The Palestinians have demonstrated that they can recruit suicide bombers with no previous record of anti-Israeli activities. Even the Sept. 11 hijackers went out of their way to establish a normal-looking profile; frequent-flier numbers, a history of first-class travel and so on. Evildoers can also engage in identity theft, and steal the identity — and profile — of an honest person. Profiling can result in less security by giving certain people an easy way to skirt security.
There’s another, even more dangerous, failure mode for these systems: honest people who fit the evildoer profile. Because evildoers are so rare, almost everyone who fits the profile will turn out to be a false alarm. This not only wastes investigative resources that might be better spent elsewhere, but it causes grave harm to those innocents who fit the profile. Whether it’s something as simple as “driving while black” or “flying while Arab,” or something more complicated such as taking scuba lessons or protesting the Bush administration, profiling harms society because it causes us all to live in fear…not from the evildoers, but from the police.
The rest of the post is equally sound:
The problem with these data mining programs is that they don’t work. There simply isn’t enough data to build a good terrorist model. Let’s take two recent American terrorists: John Allen Muhammad and Timothy McVeigh. What did their records have in common before they acted? The only common data point between the two is that they both served in the military. If we had a system that could spot these two men, it would also falsely identify every single male who served in the US Military.
That of course assumes that the data is properly mined and analyzed. But let’s go back to the initial story, where we find out that the TSA sucks at analyzing data. Where does that leave us?
Some might say finding an evil-doer among regular people is akin to finding a needle in a haystack. I say that since there’s no way to tell the bad from the good it’s closer to finding a specific needle in a needlestack. Is that really worth giving up our privacy for an illusion of security?
Wired writes about the case of a Nevada rancher who covets his privacy. Dudley Hiibel refused to hand over his identification to a police officer in 2000, an act which landed him in jail and his name on the U.S. Supreme Court’s docket.
At issue in the case, which will be heard March 22, is whether individuals stopped during an investigation of a possible crime must identify themselves to the police. Nevada state law says that individuals must do so if a police officer has reasonable suspicion that a crime has been or will be committed.
Hiibel’s attorneys argue that in such situations, known as Terry stops, individuals already have the right to not answer questions and that requiring individuals to show identification violates the Fourth and Fifth Amendments’ protections against unreasonable searches and self-incrimination.
The case runs as follows: Police responded to a report of an altercation between Hiibel and his daughter in Hiibel’s pickup parked on the side of the road. Hiibel was outside the pickup when deputies arrived and asked for his identification before asking about the alleged fight. A tape of the incident shows Hiibel refused 11 requests to produce identification, after which the deputy arrested him for impeding a police officer.
Police then arrested Hiibel’s daughter, Mimi, when she protested the arrest of her father. Both her charge of resisting arrest and the domestic violence charges against Hiibel were later dismissed. He was, however, found guilty of obstructing a police officer and fined $250, but the public defenders on the case appealed the conviction to a district court and the Nevada Supreme Court. Hiibel said:
I feel quite strongly I have a right to remain silent and I didn’t commit a crime. (The deputy) demanded my papers. I exerted my rights as a free American and I was cuffed and taken to jail.
Harriet Cummings, one of three Nevada public defenders working on the case, said that while the case might seem like “no big deal,” the legal issues at stake are huge.
This goes to the very nature of what our society is going to be like. We believe that exercising your right to remain silent should not be something that can cause you to be imprisoned.
If an officer acting under suspicion that a crime has been committed comes up to a person, starts asking questions and demands identification, and if the person, as Mr. Hiibel did, declines that demand, they can be hauled off to jail. And we think that is not something that should happen in a free society.
Solicitor General’s Office and the National Association of Police Organizations also filed briefs supporting the identification requirement, arguing that it was a necessary and not overly intrusive tool in fighting crime and terrorism. Here we have it, crime and terrorism wheeled out yet again…
Though the hearing is still weeks away, the case is already being widely debated in the blogosphere, thanks to the publicity efforts of privacy advocate Bill Scannell.
And on the topic of databases and governments – the Electronic Privacy Information Center’s brief ties the identification requirement to large-scale law enforcement databases, such as the FBI’s criminal database. The problem, according to EPIC staff attorney Marcia Hofmann, is not just that a police officer can use a driver’s license to pull up reams of data on a person from massive databases. It’s also that the encounter itself will be added to the system, Hofmann said.
Every little time something like this happens, the police question you and want to know who you are, it’s an incident that gets put into a database. And there will be a record of it thereafter, regardless of whether you did anything wrong.
Quite.
Paul of Manchester United Ruined My Life has this to say about ID cards, and the claim that they might prevent horrors like the recent mass drowning of those unfortunate Chinese:
The recent tragic death of 19 Chinese cockle pickers demonstrates why ‘Mad Dog’ Blunket’s ID card scheme will fail to address his issues.
If you are willing to live in terrible conditions as reported here by icWales (40 to a house, no bedding, etc) and work for £1/day, do you seriously think that you could care less about a voluntary ID card?
It simply shows that if you are willing to break numerous laws, that the police can’t enforce anyway, then further legislation introducing ID cards, is a futile measure when it comes to stopping criminal activity. In fact the only people ID cards will significantly affect are the law abiding citizens of the UK who will not doubt adopt and follow the rules to the detriment of their own personal freedom.
UPDATE: Blunkett is saying more of the same (Thur 12th) again, so so is Paul of MURML again.
An excellent summary of the issues that slipped under the radar over the Christmas period (the summary, not the issues…). Biometrics, surveillance, RFID, data retention and more…
It’s been a year dominated by terms such as ID theft, data protection and biometrics. But what have the powers that be been doing and what part does the tech community play in their plans?
Please read for an overview of the last year’s developments and links to relevant coverage. Silicon.com also has a useful section Protecting Your ID special reports that is worth checking out.
Wired has an article on how to have a national ID card that doesn’t threaten civil liberties.
The truth is, any identification system is inherently neutral; it can either respect privacy or threaten it. But this distinction was lost in the noise until last fall, when media mogul Steven Brill promised a middle way: a volunteer ID card that, he says, would protect both privacy and security. His company, Verified Identity, hopes to have cards and turnstiles in place by February.
…a privacy-friendly card is feasible if it follows one simple rule: verification, not identification. In other words, the card would confirm identity but wouldn’t allow the government to pick you out of a crowd. There’s a model: In 1995, Canadian entrepreneur George Tomko invented an innovative technology that made it possible to lock packets of data in encrypted files, using a fingerprint as a private key. After clearing a background check, the users of a Tomko-like card would receive a digitized packet of information that said, for example, they were cleared to cross a particular border. They’d download the parcel onto a card and lock it with a thumbprint.
Read the whole thing. The most relevant, in my opinion, is the conclusion of the article that says that according to Steven Brill the pressure for ID cards will be overwhelming after the next attack, so a well-designed one is better than a desperate one. It is not entirely without merit to say that rather than fixating on whether ID cards threaten privacy, civil libertarians and techno-positivists should explore security measures that might actually thwart terrorism. This might take the wind off the governments’ sail to introduce feel-good solutions that are invasive, threaten privacy and are ultimately less safe.
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