With Gordon Brown’s latest announcement on ID cards, you might be forgiven for believing the spin that the issue had ended. Sam Morris of the Exeter branch of No2ID, who’s been making headway on the ID issue with Exeter City Council and Devon County Councils, explains more about the No2ID campaign
No2ID is a national single issue awareness group focused on the dangers of biometric ID cards and the National Identity Register (NIR), which is the real issue at stake.
The cards will not do what they set out to do (the two main stated aims are to reduce terrorism and ID theft). Almost all acts of terrorism are perpetrated by residents of the country – the 7/7 bombers could have perfectly legally carried ID cards.
Also, there is no piece of ID anywhere in the world that cannot be faked, and is which is not hugely profitable on the black market. The ID card scheme, in fact, gives more incentives to identity thieves to commit crime.
On a more emotional tone, the cards and NIR fundamentally change the relationship between the state and citizen. Before, the state has always existed with the agreement of the people. With the ID scheme being used to administer council services, benefits, medical services etc, the relationship changes to one of the citizen justifying their existence to the state on demand. And having to pay for the privilege. This is about civil liberties, and they are important.
So what is No2ID doing about it? The local groups are raising awareness at a grassroots level, gaining support from local people. Many groups have also put forward motions that have then been passed by local councils to the affect that councils will adopt a policy of non-compliance, wherever legal, with the ID and NIR plans. This means not needing to be on the register to access council services, not taking part in pilot schemes, voluntary distribution, and all the other ways the cards and NIR are being forced into the public domain.
Some people might say: “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.” A more accurate phrase would be: “If you have nothing to hide, if your details are entered correctly, if nobody can bribe a civil servant, if the software stands up to hackers, if people are trained to use the system properly, if the government doesn’t lose any (more) of your data etc etc etc, THEN you have nothing to fear.” That’s a pretty tall order for something as valuable as someone’s identity.
If you want to help, or find out more about the issues surrounding the ID debate, join your local No2ID group, or look at the No2ID website, where you’ll also find contact details for groups around the country, see just which councils have stood up against the scheme, and see the latest movements in the campaign.
For more details, contact Sam Morris at exeter@no2id.net
• Will ID cards add to, or undermine, security? Comments below, please.
“Before, the state has always existed with the agreement of the people. With the ID scheme being used to administer council services, benefits, medical services etc, the relationship changes to one of the citizen justifying their existence to the state on demand.”
You’re right. Finally, the benefits offices will be able to find out who’s claiming benefits in four different names. What a crying shame that would be for Devon, where a lot of the inner-city streets are no-go areas after 6pm due to the fact that they’re full of chavvy, drunken benefit cheats. I can’t afford to drink every night, yet they can without a job. Awesome! We MUST protect their rights.
Fuck human rights, frankly. If you aren’t doing anything wrong, you’ve got no reason to worry about having an ID card.
“If you have nothing to hide, if your details are entered correctly, if nobody can bribe a civil servant, if the software stands up to hackers, if people are trained to use the system properly, if the government doesn’t lose any (more) of your data etc etc etc, THEN you have nothing to fear.”
I have nothing to fear about getting on a train, provided I don’t jump in front of it and provided that it doesn’t crash. I have nothing to fear about walking down the street, provided I’m not attacked by a gang of unemployed chavs, run over by a drunk-driver mounting the pavement and providing I take care when crossing the road. Everything in this world has risks.
Seems to me that those who pirate software/movies/games, deal/use drugs, cheat the system and get “somehow” involved in fights on regular occurrences are the ones who are making the most noise about this one – and have been since day one.
Hi Common Sense,
Firstly, thanks for taking the time to comment – it’s always better to have the debate than silence. I fear, however, that I cannot agree with what you say.
Firstly, instead of making any reasoned arguments, you’re ranting; lumping in anyone you seem to not like into one. You do make some points, though, so here goes.
In regard to benefit fraud (similar to the underage drinking argument), we must remember that this is usually down to employers. There is enough documentation in place (just as fakeable as the ID card, admittedly) to give any employer with the will to do so an answer to whether or not someone is legal to work.
The fact is that cash-in-hand employers are making the choice to facilitate the benefit fraud, and if they wish to continue, the ID card is just another document they can choose not to ask to see. So in this case, the card will do little. On your comment regarding four or five different names, once again this is easy with a faked card (the sale of which provides more money for the drug dealers you mention in your second comment, who are connected to the criminal gangs who would supply them).
With regard to your second post, which seems to be a response to the last paragraph of my first post, it is your choice to jump in front of a train, or other such melodramatic examples. You are right, however, that the world is full of risk, and that is something we must all deal with on a daily basis.
If we are to understand the level of risk as the ease or accessibility to or lack of protection from the things that may cause us harm, the cards and the National Identity Register (the ‘power behind the throne’ of the ID cards, if you like) will increase the everyday risk of harm coming to you. The fine for wrong information, for instance (not wrong given by you, you understand, but wrongly inputted by the clerk that day). Or maybe the institutionalised prejudice that will come to some groups of society with the introduction of the scheme, much like the great imbalance of racial origin of people being stopped and searched randomly by the police.
The card and register gives minimal benefit, usually along the lines of repeating schemes that are already in place. Its cost (currently around £90 each, which you pay for personally), unwieldy size, impossibility to maintain without error, weakness too digital attack (hacking), weakness to human weakness (bribing), and fueling of the black market to name a few, are all reasons why this scheme increases to everyday risk of harm in the broadest sense coming to you.
Forgive the length of my answer, but the looseness of you criticism made it necessary. On your final points in both comments, i will be brief. Firstly, thank you for the assumption from text on a webpage that i’m a drug-using, movie-pirating, great-unwashed, add-your-own-Daily-Mail-insult-here, kind of person. Your prejudice and assumption does nothing but harm you and devalue your point of view. Maybe i’m even an immigrant…
Lastly, and I think I’ll just leave this one hanging…”Fuck human rights, frankly.”…?
Id cards are a fact of life in many countries and in any event I rather suspect that ID cards are going to be a victim of the cost cutting exercises that any government is going to have to undertake.
Finally can I suggest that people confine their comments to a few pithy sentences, reading these long winded comments is a bit like listening to a politic broadcast!
Apologies Graham, i just felt that not to correct some of CommonSense’s comments would have been a bit negligent. Sometimes political viewpoints need more than a few pithy sentences to fully explain.
We can but hope that ID cards will fall as part of the cost-cutting, and you’re right that ID cards are a fact of life in many countries.
On the other hand, not a single country in Europe has introduced ID cards without being either at war or under dictatorship. No government has dared to it during democratic peacetime. I don’t want Britain (oldest democracy in the world) to be the first.
Sam,
Thanks for the bit about european ID cards, I didn’t know the origins.