Who am eye? Booo! to the ID card proposals...
ID cards as proposed by the current govrnment are a bad idea for the following reasons (among others)
1. The government proposes ID cards should be mandatory for those applying for passports. This is sold to us as voluntary because passports are not compulsory. Driving licences are also not compulsory, but they are very necessary. So why not demand that we are ID'd when get a driving licence, instead? Because people wouldn't stomach a £80 windfall on your driving licence, and would start to question why the hell we need ID cards in the first place. Compulsion by stealth indeed...
2. Giving every British citizen an ID card cannot really be expected to reveal to us the number of illegal immigrants in the country. I have seen Venn diagrams. Clearly someone in goverment has not.
3. Including data on an ID card that cannot be read or accessed or challenged by the carrier, is an infringement of privacy and liberty. Will we be able to control who this information is shared with, or indeed challenge what kind of information is recorded?
4. One argument i have heard in favour of the proposed ID cards is that a huge amount of data about us is held by all sorts of organisations already (e.g. credit rating, marketing data), so what is the problem with a little more? Well, to me it seems that that data is already too much, and already affects the opportunities and choices we have - more in this case is not necessarily better (think of insurance companies wanting to get their hands on medical details).
5. The records kept by insurance and marketing companies does affect our economic opportunities and choice, but it does not as far as I know, affect our criminal status. At present the police have the right to collect and permanently keep DNA (which is human tissue) from any individual arrested, even if not charged, without appeal. This means that a national DNA database of the 'bad' is growing under our noses. What pretext is the minimum for arresting a person and taking their tissue for databasing? In what way can an arrest without charge be used as evidence in a later court case? Is the mere suggestion that you might have once made a separate transgression enough to stand as evidence in a court, or sufficient to bring a case to trial? Surely this would normally be inadmissable - so why collect the DNA? It smacks somewhat of the mediaeval French justice system (see Ch2, discipline and punish, by foucault), or the inmates of guantanamo bay. Maybe not directly connected to ID cards you might counter - but what is the relevance of that DNA if it is not ultimately for some sort of policing purpose?
6. Why on earth do they want to do this? It will be very expensive, quite possibly not as reliable as hoped and the benefits are unclear.
SO, to make ID cards acceptable.. what do we need? I think compulsory might be ok, PROVIDED:
-that all data carried be accessible and challengeable by the owner via an easily accessible and transparent appeal process
-that the ID cards and database are extrememly secure. I don't want every employer I work for to be informed of my syphilis, alcohol problem or political persuasions..!
-that they contain NO records of any past criminal/antisocial behaviour (that is a police, and separate matter from identity)
-they contain NO data about travel or employment/national insurance etc - again these are matters entirely separate from identity
-any medical details are put there at the owner's discretion
It seems that the goverment really wants the ID card so that they can in fact have all the above!
If it were simply a matte of identity I might not be so disconcerted...
If I have made any errors of fact, or grievous conundrums of argument, please do comment and let me know.
posted by adam @ 11:02 AM
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