Samizdata

The Home Affairs Select Committee met last night to consider Big Blunkett’s plan to impose compulsory National Identity Cards on innocent British citizens. They interviewed some of the Home Office officials who have accepted responsibility for disassembling our civil liberties by implementing the cards.

Of particular interest to the Committee was the cost of the scheme. Despite being asked no less than seven times, the Home Office officials repeatedly refused to answer the question saying only that it would be between 1.3 thousand million and 3.1 thousand million pounds. As Committee Chair John Denham pointed out, a range of 2 thousand million pounds is unacceptably broad. And that’s assuming that the project remains on budget!

This unwillingness to talk openly about cost suggests a possible weak point within the Government. It is probably worth pressing this when contacting your MP or the media.

It’s especially ironic that the reason given for refusing to answer was “commercial confidentiality”. It seems that civil servants expect to have their privacy protected whilst they invade ours.

Full story in The Guardian

Cross-posted from The Chestnut Tree Cafe

Here (in the better a bit late than a bit never category) is vnunet.com reporting on Wednesday’s Queen’s Speech:

Plans to introduce identity cards have been included in the Queen’s Speech today, marking a significant testing ground for biometric security technology.

Details of the plans were kept to a minimum, with Her Majesty telling parliament that the government “will take forward work on an incremental approach to a national identity cards scheme and will publish a draft bill in the new year”.

It is likely that the cards will incorporate biometric technology. With potentially almost 50 million cards (for UK citizens aged 16 or above) being issued, this would be a major testing ground for the technology.

The technology is controversial, and the cabinet is not united:

Even Cabinet ministers have been sceptical about the plans. When talking about ID cards recently, Trade and Industry secretary Patricia Hewitt acknowledged that the government’s track record indicated that large IT projects had “a horrible habit of going wrong”.

And as civil libertarians predicted long ago, the Data Protection Act will only apply to the citizenry, not to the Government itself:

The legislation to be unveiled next year will also aim to iron out potential problems with existing laws, such as the Data Protection Act (DPA), to give the government greater flexibility on how it can use personal information.

Those pesky “existing laws”.

The DPA imposes conditions on how stored personal information can be used.

The government intends to combine information currently stored by the Passport Agency and the Driving and Vehicle Licensing Agency to form a national identity database. This procedure could face problems without the clarification.

Ah yes. Clarification.

The era of Joined Up Government approaches inexorably.

The Independent reports that despite Big Blunkett’s posturing the public is losing patience with his plans to force compulsory National Identity Cards on innocent British citizens.

A new MORI poll suggests 19% of people believe wrongly that ID Cards are the best way to cut crime. That figure is depressingly high but still a lot lower than the 29% who gave the same answer two years ago.

Blunkett has said that compulsion will not be introduced unless there is “clear public acceptance” of the principle. Polls like this suggest that we are slowly turning the tide of public opinion.

Cross-posted from The Chestnut Tree Cafe

The press likes to present itself as an advocate of people’s freedoms; certainly vis a vis the state, the Fourth Estate proports to be the people’s friend. But many of the state’s urges to control and dominate it’s citizenry strikes a chord with elements of the media, and this editorial from the Sydney Morning Herald is remarkable. The remarkable feature is that ID Cards have not actually been on the government agenda in Australia. The effect of this article is to actually put ID cards on the public agenda, rather then respond to a government initiative.

For all the repudiation of Big Brother that defeat of the Australia Card supposedly symbolised, Australians do not know the extent of state surveillance of their everyday lives today. Surveillance of their financial arrangements is more exact and accessible than ever before. In the vacuum since the 1987 debate on the merits and demerits of a compulsory ID system, we are not to know whether Australian sentiment has changed. It is likely though that we will soon get the chance to find out.

What is extraordinary is that the SMH, a supposedly liberal minded journal, seems determined to put ID cards on the agenda. It is true that the editorial did not advocate an ID card system, but nor did it condemn it. An extraordinary state of affairs.

Compulsory state ID cards are a monstrous assault on individual liberty, as well as useless in protecting us from the increasingly sophisticated terror groups who threaten us. That much is clear.

So here’s a question. At every possible occasion, we should ask Conservative MPs, including new party leader, Michael Howard, whether his party would abolish any such compulsory ID scheme put into place by the current Labour government. Similarly, selection committees for prospective parliamentary candidates should be urged to select those who pledge to reverse any ID card law.

Of course, when he was Home Secretary in the 1990s, Howard proposed ID cards, and his record on civil liberties is, to put it mildly, dismal. But he has a chance to repent, to start anew.

So to repeat the challenge – Tories – stand up and fight the ID card.

Mark Littlewood, Liberty’s Campaign Director responds:

We need to guard against ID cards being introduced by stealth. Whilst we warmly welcome the Cabinet’s decision to put off a decision on making the cards compulsory, a fudged and muddled compromise is no way to proceed. All the evidence from other European countries suggests that ID cards are expensive, ineffective and damage community relations. In Britain, opinion polls show that several million adults would refuse point blank to carry one. The government should think very carefully before spending billions of pounds on a scheme that could ignite such public outrage. Tackling fraud, combatting terrorism and reducing crime require detailed and intricate policy solutions. ID cards are no answer at all. They represent a real threat to our civil liberties and our personal privacy. There is no obvious upside.